At The Write Practice, we publish a new article each day designed to help writers tackle one part of their writing journey, from generating ideas to grammar to writing and publishing your first book. Each article has a short practice exercise at the end to help you immediately put your learning to use.
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When I was 13, my best friend’s father, the pastor of my church, came out as gay. Years later, I decided to write about the experience.
I had this memory of my best friend being harassed by members of our church congregation as she walked home from school, but when I asked my mom about this, she reminded me I couldn’t have been walking home from school with my friend since we didn’t attend the same school. I had created that memory out of stories I’d been told.
Some writers write prose that sounds good. The writing makes you want to read it slow, as if you could let the words melt on your tongue. I once read some of Faulkner's Sartoris out loud to Liz. Faulkner is known for his long, convoluted sentences and huge jumps in...
Why do authors read? We all know why we should read more: to learn the rules, to understand the language better, to figure out which stories work and which don’t. But I wanted to get deeper than shoulds. Why do experienced, published authors actually read? Roz is about as experienced a novelist, not to mention blogger, as they come, so I hope this gives you an insight into a real author’s reading life, and how to improve your own.
This week, I began my new editing job by getting into a novel on track to be published in 2012. To prepare, I read three novels, two of which were by other authors in the same genre to get a sense of the "rules" of the genre. The other was the first book in the...
Happy Saturday, writing friends. As you know, on Saturday I have only one rule: do the opposite of something we did during the week. The reasoning behind this is simple. If you occasionally break the guidelines you set for yourself, your writing will never get stale,...
The Write Practice's mission is to help writers like you succeed, and one of the ways we want to do that is by giving you a place to show off your work. That's why today we're launching something I'm extremely excited about (and huge thanks to the illustrious Mr. Jeff...
Every day is a big day. Today, the trees are bare in Georgia. I see the white bark and skeletal branches from my window. Today, Talia will smile at me and we'll talk about our days. I will call my parents to see how their flight home was. Today, I will be alive, and...
Writing, for me, is not just writing. It's blogging. It's tweeting. It's sharing on facebook. It's responding to comments. It's checking stats. It's guest posting. It's a day long hustle to make this blog into something I know it needs to be. And it's worth it....
Orson Scott Card says action is the strongest form of characterization. We form opinions of people based on what they do. If Fred shoots someone, we’re going to think Fred is violent and may have issues controlling his anger. A character is as a character does.
This made me wonder, if action is the strongest form of characterization, then what’s the weakest?
Last year, to make some extra money, I worked Black Friday as a temp at a shoe store. From ten at night until seven in the morning, I stacked shoe boxes on sale between fifty and sixty percent off. It was the longest night of my life. It was crazy. When I got to the...
