THE RYW Blog
WRITING, SELLING, AND BALANCING YOUR LIFE
Branding, Promotion… and Grilled Cheese
Deep in deadline hell, peeps. For me, this usually means a scattered attention span, a lot of mumbling under my breath -- and a hair trigger around things that seem trivial, almost stupid. So yesterday, I tripped on one of these triggers. Thankfully, after a few...
Every Scene is a Story
Without getting too terribly esoteric, I've been seeing a lot of holographic patterning in my Year of Cruise. To display both my geek and hippy-dippy tendencies, I mean "holographic" as in "whole in every part." If you cut a hologram in two, each half will still hold...
Star Wars: Plot Points In Action
I've recently put my first reference book up on Kindle, called Rock Your Plot: A Simple System for Plotting Your Novel. It details the process I use for pre-writing and plotting my novels. It's a simple, repeatable system for anyone writing any form of commercial...
Story Structure vs. Reader Experience.
When I revise my work, or when I'm editing someone else's work, there are two main elements I consider. The first is story structure: what the story is. The second is reader experience. This is how the story is told. Structure first. When I revise, the first thing I...
A steaming pile of Should.
I recently had a workshop "chat" with a bunch of writers, on how to write every day. Not that I necessarily advocate writing every day, but especially after my last run-in with my Muse, I discovered that if I don't dedicate at least regular time and focus to...
What if you couldn’t screw it up?
I've noticed on some of the writer forums and blogs I check out, and in some of my classes, that there is this obsession with getting it right. What's the right way to plot, some ask. How should this work? What do editors want to see? What should they focus on, or...
How Genre Fiction is like Top Chef.
I got my start writing category romance. I have also done ghostwriting, and I'm looking at doing some work-for-hire. There are a number of reasons for that, not the least of which being my son enjoys things like food, and a roof over his head. That said, I think...
How to Build A Writer’s Support Network
I've said it before, I'll say it a million times: every writer writes alone, but no writer succeeds that way. The world is not necessarily kind or understanding when it comes to writers. We're not even kind to ourselves. The best way to survive is to build a support...
Coloring Inside The Lines.
This is a short post -- I'm planning on writing more posts, quantitatively speaking, but in the World o' Cruise, I'm taking it a bit easier on myself. I was drawing and coloring with my son today. He's still sort of all over the place, but at five, he's developing his...