While I was working in higher education, we would spend time discussing what type of writing feedback to give students on their first draft. What kind of feedback is important? What kind of things do we ignore until a later draft? Or ignore completely? This ties into my blog post from a couple of years…
I’ve had several conversations about this the last month or so. Despite how much many of us love writing, pushing out the words can be a struggle. I offer you my top three tips to help you motivate yourself to write. Accept that Your Work Won’t Be Perfect You might hear this one frequently, but…
If you haven’t checked out my post on The Shadow Strikes, now is the time. It’s the prequel to today’s movie International Crime. I’ll wait. Summary The movie International Crime was released in 1938, directed by Charles Lamont, and starred Rod La Rocque as Lamont Cranston and Astrid Allwyn as Phoebe Lane. Cranston is also…
When I was first starting out as a blogger, I looked up how to write a blog post. I wanted to know what I was really supposed to do. And the results were disappointing. Most blog posts out there that explain how to create a blog post are all about physically creating one. You know,…
I finished this book in one sitting. I just kept going. I wanted to know how it ended. I felt attached to the characters and their journey. Parts of it were really difficult to read, but it felt worth it in the end. So, let’s review You’d Be Mine by Erin Hahn. Summary You’d Be…
I am obsessed with this book for several reasons. I got it from the library about a week ago, read it in a couple of hours, and then bought myself a copy. So, let’s get into my review of Love and Luck. Summary I actually mentioned this book in my blog post a couple of…
I’m going to state right off the bat that I am not a fan of writing in the first person. I’ll explain why in this post. First of all, first person point of view is writing your story with “I.” For example, “I went to the store” versus “you went to the store” (second person)…
I’m a big fan of character-driven stories, meaning I’m a big fan of taking the time to develop characters for your story before plot. If you come up with a plot and then try to make characters fit, it reads as less organic, and you might be shoving characters into spaces that don’t work for…
So, rather than do a comprehensive analysis of the final season of Game of Thrones when many people have done it better, and I have nothing to contribute, I’ve decided to do a round-up of my favorite takes. I will say that, like most people, this season really disappointed me. Game of Thrones has always…
First, let’s make sure we’re all clear on what exactly an adverb is. An adverb is a word that modifies an adjective or a verb. So, in the sentence, “he said softly,” “softly” is the adverb. Basically, any word that ends in -ly is probably an adverb. No In his book The First Five Pages (a book I highly…