Day 20 A Secret to Writing Good Mystery Stories (and learning, and creating change, and…)

First of all, allow me to take a moment to congratulate myself for making it to Day 20 in my self-imposed, 30 day, blog-post challenge. There, a brief pat on the back using one of the stretches my PT person taught me Monday morning. Ah, much better. Now, about writing good mystery stories. I've found [...]

Day 19 Evil Characters

A quick note...if you need an example of an evil character, I recommend the person in charge of the TV here in the waiting room filled with people waiting for their colonoscopy. After what they’ve been through over the past 24 hours, and now seeing the TV showing commercials for Steak and Shake milkshakes on [...]

Day 17 Writing Authentic Characters (and understanding people in general)

Question: Your characters seem like real people. How do you create your characters? Are they based on real people? First, thanks for the question and comment, I'm glad to hear those folks feel to you, too. I don't think there is one secret to creating characters. If there is, no one has told me about [...]

Day 16 The Power of Story.

I have always believed in the power of story. That's one of the reasons I've spent most of my life as a storyteller and now story-writer. I've been thinking more about that over the past few weeks as I have talked with friends about the holidays they are celebrating based on their faith stories. I [...]

Day 15 More ideas…and all FREE!

I stumbled across another example of where the ideas come from for the stories I create, so I thought I would write a "Part 2" to yesterday's post answering that question asked by folks who still believe there is some super-secret source writers use. I'll just add that I read this morning that when Theodore [...]

Day 14 Where do the ideas come from?

I often get that question about where the ideas come from for the things I write. Well, I've got a great example of how it works right now! I am not responding to a question in this post, but want to share something I stumbled across today that I plan to spend a lot more [...]

Day 13 Your favorite quote?

Question: What is your favorite quote? "I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult." - E. B. White A short one for today. Hey, it's almost Friday. How are you going to change the world this weekend?

Day 12 Using music to create the writing “trance”?

Question: What impact, if any, does music have on your writing? Do you listen to anything in particular while writing? What is your go-to jam or artist to get the juices flowing? Oh yeah! Gotta keep the juices flowing! For me, it completely depends on what I'm writing, what character is most central, how clearly [...]

Day 11 When you are not writing?

Question: What kinds of things do you when you are not writing? I guess I spend my non-writing time the way many other writers do...doing those fascinating things that come with being a part of such an exciting and fascinating lifestyle that comes with the role of being an "author". For example, this afternoon I [...]

Day 10 Why Write?

Question: I've always wanted to write a book, but when I go to a bookstore and see all of the books that are already out there, I just wonder how I could ever compete with all of those and give up. How do you get yourself to keep writing? I did a book signing in [...]

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