Freedom and Framework: Story Planning for Pantsers

New for 2018! Flying by the seat of your pants to write the first draft for your book feels so freeing. It’s a time to play, to experiment, to try out new ideas. What fun! But diving into a project as big as a novel without any plan at all often means a lot of extra work after the draft

Writing 101: Three Songs, Two Novellas and One Farewell Concert

Today’s prompt at Writing 101 asks us to: Write about the three most important songs in your life — what do they mean to you? Music has been such a big part of my writing life, which goes back over thirty years, that it’s hard to pick just three songs. To help, I thought I’d narrow the search criteria and

Writing 101: It Helps to Read the Directions

Silly me, the last post I wrote, which I thought was for the Writing 101 challenge, turns out to be based on a prompt posted not only yesterday (doh!), but one that was not even part of the Writing 101 challenge at all. Boy oh boy, I need to read directions more carefully. You’d think I’d be better at it

Snapshot Stories: A Hope Chest, the Hunt for a Photo, and a New Book Title

This month I’m participating in the WordPress Writing 101 Blogging Challenge. Today’s prompt was: Open the first photo album you can find — real or virtual, your call — and stop at the first picture of yourself you see there . Tell us the story of that photo. I was immediately drawn to this prompt because it reminded me of