What's the point of an outline? Whether consciously or not, every writer is in search of a process. A lot of writers want to dive right into their first drafts and start amassing pages. Though …
First-Time Novelist
“Write What You Know” Can Be Misunderstood
Every writer hears the old song: “Write what you know.” This can be misunderstood. The fact is, we don’t write what we know, but rather, we write the nature of our experience. A plumber doesn’t have …
Discovering Your Process
Finding Your Way As you write each day, you discover your own process. You begin to see there is no “right way” to create and that your objective is simply to let the story live. The first draft is a …
Trusting the Process
Be open to possibilities When I wrote my first novel Diamond Dogs, I had the idea that my hero, a high school senior, gets rid of the body. He accidentally kills a kid while driving late one night on …
Take Risks – Advice for First-Time Writers
“In order to share one's true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool." - Criss Jami Writing your first story is sort of like, well . . . there’s a first time for everything. It’s …
Developing Your Writing Technique
Technique develops over time. By reading and writing, we absorb a sense of story structure, cadence, and rhythm. We learn how to create and release tension. We deepen our relationship to our …
What Happens Next?
The first step in creating a fully alive story is imagining the world. This simply means envisioning your characters in relation to each other and asking, "What happens next?" With each idea or image …
How Do I Begin?
"How do I begin?" The process of story creation is mysterious. Where do our story ideas come from? From where do our characters emerge? At their core, our stories are born out of an impulse to make …
Writing Without Distraction
You’ve begun working in earnest. The story is alive, your cylinders are firing. You’re getting up every morning and putting in the hours. But then, something happens. Life delivers a distraction, …
Creativity is Your Birthright
Creativity is your birthright. We live in a culture that is invested in our believing otherwise. I frequently hear folks talk of talent as though it's a finite commodity. People tend to think you …