I've been thinking about the romance genre lately, trying to explain what it is that "happens" in a romance story. Obviously, it's about a couple finding each other (or realizing that they already know each other) and reaching their happily-ever-after moment (whether it does or doesn't last is another matter entirely, but unless you write … Continue reading Romance: Two Best-Selling Plot Types
Category: Writing Advice
This is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog-hop, designed to help encourage authors and foster discussions about writing topics across the internet and the world. This month's question is "How do major life events affect your writing? Has writing ever helped you through something?" Most of the time, life affects my writing by … Continue reading How Life Intersects with Writing
This is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog-hop, designed to help encourage authors and foster discussions about writing topics across the internet and the world. This month's question is "What pitfalls would you warn other writers to avoid on their publication journey?" At first, I wasn't sure which pitfall to talk about—the challenge … Continue reading Writing Pitfalls: Doubt and Discouragement
This is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog-hop, designed to help encourage authors and foster discussions about writing topics across the internet and the world (I missed the memo about it needing to be posted yesterday, apparently). This month's question is "What's are your ultimate writing goals and how have they changed over … Continue reading Ultimate Writing Goals and How They Can Change
This is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog-hop, designed to help encourage authors and foster discussions about writing topics across the internet and the world. This month's question is "What's harder for you to come up with, book titles or character names" For me, it's definitely coming up with a book title. Because … Continue reading How to Pick a Character’s Name
Characters do all kinds of things in fiction. Their actions make up the stories we write, and if they did nothing...it'd be pretty boring. But how much motivation should there be in what they do? Do you, as the author, need to always know why they're doing it, or can they just "do something for … Continue reading Character Actions: Should There Be a Reason Why?
This is part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog-hop, designed to help encourage authors and foster discussions about writing topics across the internet and the world. This month's question is "When your writing life is a bit cloudy or full of rain, what do you do to dig down and keep on writing?" Personally, … Continue reading What Helps You Keep Writing?
Lately, I've been trying an experiment I've heard about for years with authors and never really took serious: writing every day. Here are some quotes from writers on the subject: “One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages … Continue reading What Writing Every Day Has Taught Me
This week, the Insecure Writer's Support Group is asking how we celebrate a writing goal or completing a book. Click here to join the fun! As I was thinking this over, I realized I don't usually celebrate finishing a project. So often, it's "done-and-on-to-the-next." I think this is partly because of my schedule--book coaching projects … Continue reading Why We Should Celebrate Our Writing Goals
Recently, I've been refining my editing process, discovering just what my word processing software can do (and that, yes, it can convert and make things Microsoft Word can still use, despite being made on a Mac). Gone are the days when "editing" meant printing out documents and marking them up with all sorts of little … Continue reading The Differences between Copyediting and Book Coaching
Andrea Lundgren 