Beware the myth of Easy Street

The other day, a well-meaning writer on Twitter tweeted, "I've found that if the story isn't easy to write, it's because you're telling the wrong one." Once in a while, that...

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A picture is worth a thousand words: visual prompts

I'm a verbal/auditory thinker. My stories usually begin with a character talking to me. I actually get pretty confused by assembly instructions from Ikea that are nothing but...

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Kindling for the bonfire: Autumn writing prompts

Photo credit: ali110 from morguefile.com In this post, I discussed using warm-ups as a means to break through your initial reluctance to start a writing session. Sometimes...

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Five tips for diversifying your cast

Photo credit: Prawny from morguefile.com  Last year, a handful of authors began an initiative called "We Need Diverse Books" to raise awareness about  the...

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With me or against me? Using dual and duel

For today's phonics fun, I'm going to tackle the semi-homophone pair, dual and duel. Most pronounce the words similarly, though one of the pair might have two syllables (dewl;...

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