By Penny Reeve There is a character in my young adult novel Out of the Cages, called Purna. For the majority of the novel she does not speak. Despite being a young woman, she behaves like a child. She rocks and cowers and watches the world with wide frightened eyes.…

By James Hannibal @jamesrhannibal The Search Engine Swamp. The Wikipedia Wastelands. The Data Doldrums. At the center of the author’s pirate map to story treasures, we find a dense bog where the blotted scrawls of the cartographer’s quill read, “Here be time-eating monsters!” It’s the Research Bog. Stay on the…

by Edie Melson @EdieMelson The other day I was talking to a friend of mine and this person confided that she was afraid she didn’t have what it takes to be a writer. “I’m just not good enough to get a book published, and I don’t know if I ever will be.”…

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Reminders about our craft burst our imaginations into creative mode. From A to Z, we find sources of inspiration to keep us writing. I’ve chosen the first word that entered my mind as a means to keep my imagination in full gear. [tweet_box design="default" float="none" inject="#writingtip…

By Lindsey P. Brackett @LindsBrac While we may have finished our series on typing your characters with the Enneagram, this ancient tool for understanding yourself and others still has plenty of information worth examining. Especially with the trying times in which we all now find ourselves, recognizing points of stress…

by Edie Melson @EdieMelson I had always believed that I needed at least an hour, and preferably three, to make any progress at all with my writing. I couldn’t have been more wrong. In the past year, I’ve learned how to use the time I have, even if it’s just fifteen…