There’s a lot of this kind of thing going on. Katie Cat continues to sneak around the house, looking for chances to get closer to Sassy without Sassy seeing her. When the dog was asleep in her bed in the living room a couple of days ago, Katie tiptoed in and got close enough to …Read More
Self-Editing One Step at a Time: Cleaning Up Those Dialogue Tags
To continue my series on self-editing tips, I’m turning my attention today to dialogue and the tags we use to identify the speakers in a conversation. This step may be combined with others during the sentence-by-sentence editing read because it addresses only these three mechanics of labeling dialogue: When dialogue is carried on between two …Read More
So Far So Good: Katie and Sassy are Getting Used to Each Other
No matter where Sassy the Scottish Terrier is, when Katie Cat is up and about, she creeps and tiptoes from place to place so she can watch the dog. Sometimes she even creeps so close we have to move her away, just in case. Sassy is energetic and likes to bounce and jump and lunge. …Read More
The Future of Fiction … by Jacqueline Seewald
Increasingly, we are seeing the blurring of borders in fiction. At one time, for example, mystery novels always contained certain clearly defined elements. There could be no paranormal explanations. Suspects always had real motives. Murders were not random. Romantic involvements were limited and not detailed. Romance novels also followed tried and true formulas and love …Read More
Coming Soon: A report on the arrival of Sassy Dog in the Stoltey household
My husband and I drove from Colorado to Illinois last Thursday/Friday, picked up Sassy the Scottish Terrier on Saturday morning, then drove back to Colorado over Saturday and Sunday. The dog traveled better than the humans did. Road trips are exhausting at our age. Sassy, of course, is much younger. She seemed to remember me …Read More
Take a Leap … by Jenny Sundstedt
Poor February. It’s the little brother of the calendar, never quite matching up to the longer months. But every four years, it puffs up its chest a bit with the addition of an extra day. I love the novelty of Leap Day, even though it occasionally gyps me out of a coveted Friday or Saturday …Read More
Writing the Range with Northern Colorado Writers … by April Moore
Rome wasn’t built in a day. That’s what I had to remind myself on January 1 when I embarked on setting up my first writers conference. It ended up taking me five weeks to gather nearly 25 presenters for the 2016 Northern Colorado Writers Conference. While I had been a part of the NCW Conference …Read More
Self-Editing One Step at a Time: Weeding Out Adjectives and Adverbs
We don’t need to tell smart, intuitive readers everything and we rarely need to tell them details more than once. They will fill in the blanks as long as the blanks are not critical to the story. You can describe a protagonist (male) as 60ish with long gray hair, bronze skin, and a leathery, weathered …Read More
The Joy of Adopting New Furry Friends … by Natasha Wing
I live in Fort Collins, Colorado, a town that LOVES their dogs. Fort Collins is also home to many dog rescues and shelters. My husband and I got our furry friend, a two-year old, blue-eyed cat named Purrsia, from one such shelter. We were privileged to have green, yellow and amber-colored eyed cats in our …Read More
Self-Editing: Finding and Breaking Your Habits
Habit words. That’s what I call them. Some editors lump them into the repetitive word category. Others include them in articles about adjectives and adverbs. I’ve dubbed them habit words because they flow into our writing in the same way they clutter up our speech. The little devils were probably hardwired into our brains when …Read More
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