February 3, 2021
Nowadays, most writers can’t simply write a story, send it off to an agent or publisher and sit back and wait for the praise and money. Of course, it’s always been true for most writers that once the story has been written, they must take off their writer’s hat and put on their editor’s hat. […]
January 22, 2020
If you read my January 8, 2020 blog you saw I said there were no rules in writing. I also said there were traditions and reasons for certain ways of formatting. Again, these aren’t rules. For one thing, many of the formatting guidelines have changed over the years. Changes in how writing is published I […]
May 3, 2017
We’ve all heard those words. Never … (you fill in the blank)! Stop…! Don’t…! They’re edicts we must follow. Right? Of course not. Never write sentence fragments Never start a sentence with and or but. Never end a sentence with a preposition. Beware of sentence fragments. Oh yes, the terrible sentence fragment. When I was […]
January 20, 2016
Unless you’re writing solely for yourself (and maybe for your family and a few friends) you need to know the craft of writing: formatting; point-of-view; chapter length; what tense to use, and so on. Although getting the story you want to tell out of your head and into some sort of printable form is the […]
January 7, 2015
First, I’d like to mention that my first P.J. Benson mystery, The Crows, is being featured on Pamela Thibodeaux website this coming Saturday, January 10th. http://pamswildroseblog.blogspot I’d love it if you’d stop by and make a comment. Now, onto my weekly (first one in 2015) blog. I am once again formatting a story I finished […]
May 7, 2014
I am constantly amazed by how many writers seem to be afraid to make any changes from what WORD offers as its default. They still treat the program as if they were working on a typewriter. Need an indent, press TAB. Want to set a section of type farther in (so it looks like a […]