Getting Energized at a Writers’ Conference

Writers Conferences aren’t for everybody. They can be expensive and exhausting—and are sometimes havens for dream-smashers and know-it-all bullies. Valerie Geary wrote a great post on the Dark Side of Writers Conferences last August that’s a must-read. One solution she suggests is choosing a small, regional conference. Smaller conferences are more relaxed, usually take only a weekend, and are budget-friendly—especially if you can find one close to home so you don’t have hotel expenses.This is why I love California’s Central Coast Writers Conference ....

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12 Dos and Don'ts for Introducing your Protagonist

I've been dealing with an evil computer virus which first attacked my desktop and now seems to have killed my laptop dead. They're both old machines, so it may be better to replace them than try to fix them, but now I'm worried my back-up drives may be infected too. This is not a nice thing. But I seem to have the desktop kind of working for now.For the last two days I've been at the Central Coast Writers conference, having a fantastic time, hanging out with my idol, MR.. NATHAN BRANSFORD (yes, he really is that smart and classy. A snappy dresser,...

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The #1 Talent You Need to be a Good Writer

The brilliant columnist/philosopher/literary outlaw Michael Ventura famously said the most important talent required of a writer is the ability to work alone. In his 1993 Sun article, The Talent of the Room , Ventura wrote,“Writing is something you do alone in a room. It’s the most important thing to remember if you want to be a writer….Unless you have that, your other talents are worthless.”But it occurred to me recently that writers no longer have to be as isolated as we were when Ventura wrote those words eighteen years ago....

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I’VE WRITTEN A BOOK—NOW WHAT?

I’ve had a number of people ask me that question in the last few months. There’s tons of info out here in Cyberia, but not everybody knows how to access it. And along with the good info, there’s plenty of bad—especially from predatory vanity publishers and bogus agents. So here are some basics for the newbies around here.Your book has been critiqued, edited, and polished to a glittering sheen. What do you do next?1)     Celebrate! Break out the champagne, chocolate, fireworks, old Prince CDs, or whatever puts you in a festive...

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