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Publish Your Novel to Success: 5 Must-Take-Action Steps!

You’ve written one draft, two drafts, you love your novel, your retired 5th-grade teacher loves your novel, so you must be ready to publish, right!? Whoa back, wait up, hold on a sec, Pardner. Before you even think about sending your book out into the big (sometimes bad) world to publish, you must make sure you’re both ready! That means getting a professional copy edit, finding qualified beta…

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Want to start and finish your first, fifth, or tenth novel in 2017? Read on!

Previously, I have written about 1st drafts, and I shared my best suggestions for finishing draft 1 of your novel within 3 to 6 months (without losing your mind). Your 1st draft is the one Anne Lamott aptly dubs the “shitty first draft.” Give yourself permission to work quickly with forward momentum. When your 1st draft is complete: Set it aside for days, weeks, maybe even a month or more. Give…

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Storytelling—The Journey from Darkness toward Light, from the Existential Scream to the Universal Sigh

Here’s the thing, being human isn’t easy. We are human and we are animal—savage and tender, mindful and thoughtless, loving and cruel, base and divine—and then toss our heart and spirit into the mix and—wait, shhhh, hear that existential scream? Yup, understanding the complexities of human nature is an ongoing challenge. If you have any desire to try, and if you are a writer, painter, musician,…

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#Characters #Developing a Character #story development

What If We Could Save the Next Endangered Child?—Why Our Outrage Must Fuel Effective Action and Social Justice

In a world where violent images and stories are broadcast nonstop, there are crimes that stand out because they go so shockingly against laws of civilization and against laws of nature. When they are crimes against children, we experience outrage and grief, and we suffer a collective shame at our failure to protect the innocent and most vulnerable among us. When these crimes are perpetrated by a…

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Defeating the Pink Gremlin

At a recent writers’ retreat, we were challenged to identify our “pink gremlins,” meaning those private obstacles to achieving our writing goals. Each person wrote silently for 20 minutes and then shared the results. (If you’ve never tried a timed writing exercise, it can be enlightening. Set the clock and write!) Each individual’s pink gremlin was distinct: fear, wordiness, etc. This was mine:…

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#Writers Tools #writing exercise

Writing in a Nutshell: 9 Story Musts! (an excerpt from my forthcoming how-to, Writing in a Nutshell)

One: Action! Hero in action, ruthlessly pursuing a meaningful goal; antagonists actively standing in the way of the onrushing hero; writer in action, channeling the story, staying out of head and experiencing from the heart; prose in action, show the reader; reader in action, receiving and experiencing the story. Two: Bloody Knuckles! Also known as “skin in the game” or “a dog in this fight.” …

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Writing 101: The Mountain as Metaphor

Not many of us wake in the morning and think: “I’m going to climb Mt. Everest.” Ascending a twenty-nine-thousand-foot peak requires a skillset hardened by years of dedication and training. The same holds true for writing a book. It’s not done on a whim. You don’t cast a glance at the Toni Morrison novels on your bookshelf and think, “A Nobel Prize in Literature? Sure, I can do that.” Now, this…

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#Algonquin Redux #metaphor #mountains #writing #writing process

Awful Inspiration: War on the Page

The first war novel that truly moved me was Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo. It’s a wrenching story, set in World War I, and I read it in my teens. Nonstop. Spellbound and aghast. How did Trumbo write such a powerful novel that it has stuck with me for all these years? Trumbo’s antiwar novel is set in motion by a sound, a ringing phone, a small detail that draws the reader into the story.…

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#Hiroshima #inspiration #writing

Jiggery-pokery and Elections and 2.0 US Fluid Ounce Pours

It’s been a dark week, a dark month, a dark year for news. Countless writers are covering current stories—some with intelligence and sensitivity, many without—and after I absorb what I can, my eyes wander and my mind leaps at the chance to follow. While perusing news-lite this morning I came across the word “rejiggering”—think it was in the Huff Post—and that made me think of jiggering, meaning a…

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Wading into the Debate

It’s controversial, and some of you are going to be mad, but at the risk of offending sensibilities I feel compelled to take a stand on that age-old debate: dogs or cats? Now, I love them both—don’t get me wrong—but when it comes to storytelling, dogs make worthier subjects. Forgive me cat lovers. This isn’t to say that cats aren’t fascinating in real life. Cats are softer, and I might even argue…

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#cats #controversy #dogs #readers #writing

A Distant Mountain

I’ve come to face the startling idea that my entire life may have been outlined by a movie back in 1963, and I’m not kidding. My Old Man didn’t go to the movies very often when we were kids, because he usually didn’t like the subject or actors, but he was a fan of drive-ins on occasion. That was especially true when one of his “players” appeared in the film. While Mom was away with Little…

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Book Clubs: Love 'em or Hate 'em?

Book Clubs: Love ’em or Hate ’em?

Sometimes I finish a book aching to talk about it. You know what I mean: The story has burrowed under your skin, the ideas keep ticking in your head, and you just can’t let it go. At times like these, rather than latch onto strangers on the street or corner them in elevators, it’s nice to belong to a book club. One friend of mine had a book club that left me envious. Not only did their reading…

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#book clubs #books #bookstores #readers

Writing from Here to There

Most of us love the fact that books can take us out of our ordinary lives and transport us to distant lands. But how does an author create a story that can do that? Many novelists root their stories in places they’ve once lived. Barbara Kingsolver, for instance, spent part of her childhood in the Congo, which lends verisimilitude to her terrific novel, The Poisonwood Bible. And while The…

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#readers #settings #writers #writing life

Judging a Book by its Cover

By Sheila Lowe A or B. Which of these two covers below best addresses the question, “What does an old stuffed bunny have to do with a missing three-year-old and a religious cult?” “A” If your answer is “A” you agree with everyone I asked last Sunday “B” while signing at the L.A. Times Festival of Books at USC. “A” is the fantastic new Suspense Publishing cover for Last Writes,…

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Travel on the Horizon

If you love to travel and love to write, you can simply weave together these two urges to create the ideal occupation, right? It makes perfect sense… or so I thought when I first landed in Thailand. My writing implements were at hand and my senses were primed. I would absorb it all, craft pages of sparkling prose, and my imagined career as a travel writer would be underway. By day two, however,…

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#settings #the writing life #travel

Everyday Hero: Benny Adkins

April 1, 2016 I have read and I have seen acts of heroism and gallantry that have always amazed me. But every once in a while an individual seems to break the definition of “Hero” in such a way as to make the word insufficient to describe what he has done. Bennie Adkins is just that sort of individual. After fifty years, Adkins was finally recognized for his service in Vietnam; service that will…

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Inspiration

I once had a successful full-time job before retirement, one full of fun, and tension. Following an extremely stressful event in 1992, I realized it was time to pursue a very old dream in earnest. That decision was sparked by a very common event. The Late Winter track of John Denver’s Season Suite was playing on a high end sound system behind my desk. His wonderful music was always my…

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