“A Blessing and a Curse” RPLA Showcase: Charles Cornell

Creativity is a wonderful gift where ideas spring up from the lush jungle of the mind. But it can also be a heavy burden, drowning a person in hundreds of ideas and precious little time to work on them. Charles Cornell is very familiar with this struggle. His mind is flooded with many colorful, fantastical ideas. Luckily for us all, he’s been able to get many of these on paper. One of his recent novelettes, The Orchid Man, won Gold … Read More »

Tags and Beats: A Great Fuel in Your Tank

posted in: Writing Craft 5

We all want our book to crackle with excitement, to race to the finish so breathlessly that the reader can’t put it down. But we still need enough emotional and physical description to make her care about the characters. Just as we’re always told to show rather than tell in our narration, we need a certain amount of showing and telling in a dialogue scene. Every author has a different balance, and that’s part of what makes up their style. … Read More »

Writing Benefits from Solitude

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world. This is our 24th year of praising poetry in April. The poet and physician William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963) expressed poetry’s value this way: “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” … Read More »

“Beware of Absolutes” RPLA Showcase: Marie Brack

Many “absolutes” float about the writing world, telling writers they “must” do this or “must not” do that. One poignant piece of advice from author Marie Brack—don’t worry about ’em. She’s an excellent person to get writing advice from, after penning her own craft book and winning multiple awards. Her novella Cold Case won Gold in the Novella category in the 2019 Royal Palm Literary Awards. Marie talks top tips, the development of her mystery series, and her newest project … Read More »

Writing Productively During an Apocalypse

posted in: Writing Life 0

I don’t know about you, but my writing has gone downhill since COVID-19 starting making its ripples felt here in the good ‘ole US of A. Within days after spring break, my university closed its doors to in-person instruction, and I’ve had to transition my entire curriculum to an online format (a rather arduous task, I might add.) On top of that, I’ve been busy with everything related to COVID. It’s been an exhausting few weeks and the uncertainty of … Read More »

Write through the Crisis: Journal to Improve Your Health

posted in: Writing Life 3

While we are all stuck in our houses and busy stressing out, wouldn’t it be great if there was a quick way to improve your health with the tools you already have at home? There is, and it’s not just free weights. It’s free writing. If you have a pen and paper or a keyboard you have everything you need. We have thirty years of social psychology and physiological data to prove that simple journaling can have an immediate positive … Read More »

1 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 101