Tag Archives: writing life

Writing-Tip Wednesday: Whither This Blog? I Need Your Help

Posted on November 25, 2020 by dbjackson

I’m taking a break from dispensing advice for this week — well, mostly: Don’t eat too much, take a walk after your Thanksgiving meal, and never, ever pick the Lions to win on Thanksgiving Day. Instead, I am seeking advice … Continue reading →

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Writing-Tip Wednesday: The Quickening

Posted on November 18, 2020 by dbjackson

Okay, writers, raise your hand if any of your characters have ever done things you didn’t expect. Yeah, I figure that’s most of us. Now raise your hand if your characters have ever done things you really didn’t want them … Continue reading →

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Writing-Tip Wednesday: Goals Revisited Again, End of Year, and NaNo

Posted on November 11, 2020 by dbjackson

That is what the last month or so of most years is about. I want to set myself up to be organized, motivated, productive, and successful in the year to come. First let me wish a peaceful, healthful Veterans Day … Continue reading →

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Writing-Tip Wednesday: Waiting…

Posted on November 4, 2020 by dbjackson

[11/4 Edit:I went to bed last night thinking all was doom and gloom. This morning I see rays of hope. This isn’t over, and counting votes doesn’t happen according to ANYONE’S timetable. Hang in there folks. We are living in … Continue reading →

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Writing-Tip Wednesday: Plotting Or Not — Doing Away With a Dumb Debate

Posted on October 28, 2020 by dbjackson

This is my forty-second Writing-Tip Wednesday post of the year, and somehow I have gotten through forty-one posts without addressing that age-old writing question, “Do I or do I not outline?” Or put another way, “Plotter or pantser?” First, a … Continue reading →

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Monday Musings: How I’m Coping

Posted on October 19, 2020 by dbjackson

I’ve written about politics and social issues a lot in recent weeks, and I want desperately to avoid doing so again this week. It’s not that I don’t have more to say. I do. But I feel as though I’d … Continue reading →

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Writing-Tip Wednesday: Descriptions and Point of View

Posted on October 14, 2020 by dbjackson

Description does not — cannot — take place in an emotional or circumstantial vacuum. Not that long ago, I offered tips on writing scenes involving sex and violence, and essentially said that dealing with such encounters is almost entirely a … Continue reading →

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Writing-Tip Wednesday: Anatomy of a Rewrite

Posted on October 7, 2020 by dbjackson

As I described in a recent Writing-tip Wednesday post, I have been working recently on a trunk series — a pair of books, the first two in a projected trilogy, that I initially wrote nearly ten years ago. I have … Continue reading →

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Writing-Tip Wednesday: “Pitch Inside”

Posted on September 30, 2020 by dbjackson

In the mid-1980s, my favorite baseball player on the planet was a young pitcher for the New York Mets named Dwight Gooden. Gooden had a meteoric career that was shortened by injuries and chronic drug abuse. But for the first … Continue reading →

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Writing-Tip Wednesday: Crutch Words — Finding Them and Limiting Them

Posted on September 23, 2020 by dbjackson

Last week, John Hartness, my good friend and the owner and editor at Falstaff Books, posted on Facebook about something he was seeing while editing manuscripts. Many of his writers were starting too many lines of dialogue with, “So…” As … Continue reading →

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