Here are some things you can do to reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19. I’ve tried to include lots of supporting research so it’s clear how much medical support these suggestions carry. First, the obvious: Wear a mask in public, particularly indoors. COVID-19 is primarily an airborne disease. Wash hands frequently and thoroughly and use …
With the holidays behind us, I’ve made some more edits to my problematic opening and am hoping this time I’ve nailed it. I’d like to give a shout-out to Lisa Amowitz, who gave me some great suggestions on where my opening got too complicated or off-track. She found lots to love, but she also enabled me to …
My #writer friends will understand when I observe the irony around the first two books in my trilogy. For book 1, I cut a 121K manuscript down to 87K words. I axed scenes, subplots, weak jokes, convoluted exchanges, and long-winded phrasing. The lessons of such an exercise permeate your entire writing habit after awhile, and you become akin …
I’ve been getting some more query feedback and found something I’d never heard before: Only describe the first act, or maybe only the first 50 pages.This came as a complete shock to me. I’ve been through Writer’s Digest webinars, 3 conferences, and a ton of blog posts, and never once had I seen this advice. All …
I had a blast at Pikes Peak Writers Conference (PPWC) 2017. A few highlights: Thursday: Attending Donald Maass’ prequel session. He made us ask ever-deeper questions about our work and how we could enrich it. Friday: Moderated 2 sessions. That was my first time moderating sessions. I highly recommend it, you get to be helpful and get …
It happened again–had to send out text in .DOC format. For those of you too young to remember. .DOC is the original Microsoft Word format. In fact it’s been upgraded several times; according to Wikipedia, there are 4 versions dating back to the MS-DOS days. And .DOC is a horrid file format, and that’s the nicest …
Recently one of my dear critique group friends told me that there are combination exercise bike/desks, and I looked them up and got one (the FitDesk specifically). I have to say this was a great choice. Some people have said you can’t really effectively multi-task, but I will say I can read on there, and I …
My book’s opening continues to be an incredible challenge. This week I got new feedback on it at the Pikes Peak Writers Open Critique, which was great in that there were a good variety of people to critique, and help point out a number of remaining flaws in the opening, whille also noticing some of the …
I had a great time last weekend at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Gold Conference. To anyone who likes to write, you feel a special connection with the other people there. It’s hard for non-writers to understand what it really takes to put together a book: endless hours planning, writing, revising, critiquing, and for those looking …
Introduction My organization wanted to help employees understand the value of the IDesign Method(both the System Design, aka architecture, and the Project Design). To that end we ran a team-building exercise involving Legos. We broke into small groups (3-4 people each) and assigned each group a Lego kit. The twist: no instructions, not even the box. …