Jamie Raintree As the school year comes screeching toward a close (are there really only five more weeks left?), productivity has been a common topic amongst me and my writer-mom friends. There's a lot of concern about how productive we're going to be over the summer with the kids at home, and a lot of my […]

Kathryn Craft Turning Whine Into Gold  When thinking about what to sacrifice in order to earn a living, care for a family, and also write a novel, the first thing most of us take off the table is sleep. Unwilling to crimp anyone else’s schedule while we work hard to pursue our dream, we joke, […]

Don't you just love it when a line in a book so good, that you just have to stop reading to appreciate it for a few minutes? Me too.  I think that's part of the reason I began writing - to, just once - write one of those sentences.  You can find them scattered throughout […]

Colleen M. Story I recently spent a good six months struggling to make progress on my next novel. The sole reason: I couldn’t hear what my writer’s intuition was telling me. In an effort to solve the problem, I returned to craft, seeking solutions in plot, characterization, and timelines. All of my efforts produced a […]

Angela Ackerman Taking the time to choose the right setting for each scene is one of the best ways to ensure our writing has impact. Why? Because the setting touches everything. It can characterize the story’s cast, evoke mood, generate conflict, shape the plot, and even use symbols and emotional triggers to show readers what […]