This week, I’m blogging on the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ blog. Hop over there to read “Just-In-Time World Building” for tips on letting your story’s world unfold as your characters encounter it.
From Freelance Knights to Freelance Writers
The word “freelance” was invented in the early 1800s to describe unaffiliated knights or soldiers from centuries earlier. Medieval mercenaries weren’t attached to any particular lord, king, or queen. With their lances, swords, and battle-axes in hand, they would sign on to fight for whomever had the coin to pay them, for however short a […]
Pitch Sessions for Writers – On the RMFW Blog
Looking for a great way to pitch your book one-on-one to agents and editors while nursing a panic attack? You’re in luck. This week, I wrote a guest blog for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers (RMFW) about pitch sessions, which are 10-minute private chats with an agent or editor, often offered as part of writing conferences […]
So Many Words, So Little Time
We’re a wordy bunch, we English speakers. According to the Oxford Dictionaries’ Lexico website (“How Many Words Are There in the English Language?”), “The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1989, contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative […]
Amanda Gorman’s Poem for a New Dawn: “The Hill We Climb”
A friend of mine is an online teacher of 8th and 9th graders this year. Usually an in-classroom math teacher, this year she wanted to teach 100% online due to Covid-19, so she agreed to teach the full slate of subjects to students who opted for full-time online courses. After the holiday break, she had […]
12 Things Writers Should Never Tell Themselves
It’s still January. Yes, that longest of months (187 days, by my count) is still with us, dragging its heels through the snow like a remorseless kid being towed to the principal’s office. During January (and its partner in crime, February) it’s easy to give in to cold, dark days. Cold, dark thoughts. Cold, dark […]
