Had a big family event this weekend at my house that required a lot of preparation, so yesterday I gave myself permission to vege out, enjoy the 80+ degee weather (yes, even in Cleveland, it appears spring has arrived (and I say that with a great deal of caution)!), and dig into Brava, Valentine, Adriana Trigiani's continuation of [...]

I've recently been called upon to read a friend's partial manuscript--all written in the first person.I recently wrote a short story in the first person, which I had never seriously done before. And I realized there are pitfalls.The hardest one for me was the "telling" pitfall.  How on earth do you avoid telling if you [...]

I really hate brain fatigue.  The kind that prevents you from seeing mistakes.  When you work on a manuscript day in and day out, you are bound to get it.  Here are the top three annoying mistakes I often make and then catch only after I've had a rest from a manuscript:--I use the same [...]

Aspiring autrhor Leslie Dow did a post on Savvy Authors today about being savvy in the business of writing called "What I Learned from Lori Wilde." Lori offers a write-a-novel-in-six-months class through Savvy U.that Leslie took and enjoyed a lot.You can read Leslie's full post at Savvy Authors here.Pearls from this post follow.  Lori says, "Your writing is neither [...]

The reason I think this description (see post from earlier today) is so fantastic is that SEP describes our hero not by looks alone but by his looks as they relate to his personality.--The heroine assumes there is something about him that proclaims he was not born into blue blood--but had a rough past.--His hair color [...]