Thursday, September 25, 2008

Ideas



"The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes."
— Agatha Christie




Like Agatha, I get a lot of ideas when I'm 'doing the dishes'. Of course, with wet, soapy hands, it's a little hard to write them down!


When do you get your best ideas?

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Dialogue

If you write fiction of any type, you have to write dialogue. I was surprised to learn that a lot of authors find this the most difficult part of writing.

It has always been my favorite part of writing a novel. When I am writing, there are constant conversations going on inside of my head and I seem to have trouble inserting the descriptions in between them! I'm not saying that my conversations always 'work'. I do many, many re-writes.

In surfing the Internet for writing advice, I came across the concept of recording your dialogue and then playing it back to yourself. Have any of you ever done this? Did you find it effective?

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Contest Deadline. . .Just Ahead

The deadline for the Tony Hillerman short story contest is coming up quick! Here is a link with the guidelines, if you still want to enter:

http://www.wordharvest.com/index.php/contests/shortstory

Me? I'm still working on my entry, and hope to have it polished up in time.