Writer Life

Lately, I’ve had a huge issue with second guessing myself. I’ve been busying doing things for Crimson Melodies and for my family, and this site somehow got pushed down on the priority list. It was mostly due to necessity, but that doesn’t stop me from wondering if maybe I could have found a way to […]

There’s a lot of areas where the idea of wanting to be a writer versus actually being a writer overlap. At the end of the day, wanting to be a writer is all about trying. Being a writer is all about doing. This post is inspired, in part, by this article on Medium.com. You can go read it […]

Last year was Writing on Point’s debut, and it had some notable moments. These were the top writing craft posts from 2016. 10) Tension, Fear, and Consequences in Fiction Writing Tension is one of the best ways to keep readers turning pages. This post is all about making sure every scene uses tension to highlight […]

Holiday parties can be a mixed bag, especially for writers. Yet, tis the season. You can reference a previous post called Crafting Your Writer Lie…I mean, Life for a few other insights on approaching conversations about being a writer. This one [hopefully?] has a few additionally useful tidbits. Just in time for the holidays. Because […]

This month has been all about getting myself on a new schedule. We bought a house and moved over the summer. My oldest is at a new elementary school and we enrolled our one-year-old in part-time daycare for nine hours a week. My mornings are no longer about waiting for the baby to take a […]

Just a few announcements this week. The excerpt from my upcoming book will follow. My first book about writing, publishing date TBA Title: This Isn’t a Writer’s Guide (It’s a Writer’s Machete) For: new or returning writers Idea: There’s a lot of information out there about how to be a better writer, but very few actually […]

If you’ve never heard of NaNoWriMo it stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is an event that takes place in November and spans the globe, challenging every writer who signs up to completing 50,000 words in a single month toward a writing project – or projects – of their choice. National Novel Writing Month […]

There’s a fair sized list of questions that all writers dread being asked. (Have I heard of you? Is your book out yet?) All of them – or at least close to it – are lead into by one ice-breaker question that, for me, tops the list. What do you do for a living? Most […]

A quick personal note before the blog post begins: Update about Writing On Point – There’s been a lack of regular posts since the end of April. Life sometimes throws a lot of things at you, and this was one of those times for me. The blog took a backseat because I didn’t prepare posts […]

I briefly entertained the idea of doing an April Fool’s Day post, but decided against it (mostly since I had trouble settling on a single idea). So today’s topic is just a regular non-fool’s day post, although I highly encourage the celebration of the day in all its pranking glory. April is known in the […]

Does this sound familiar? It’s the middle of the night, and you’re about to go to sleep, when a brilliant story idea or dialogue or just some absolutely perfect prose pops into your head. What do you do? Most of us in this wide digital world are never very far from our smart phones, and […]

Planner and Pantser were terms introduced to me while participating in NaNoWriMo. They are two approaches to first draft story writing. Why Planner and Pantser? Planners are writers who plan their novels, and Pantsers write their stories by the seat of their pants. Detailed outlines are the purview of Planners, typically completed before a single word […]

Writing may be a solitary pursuit, but at some point most writers want to sell their stories. These are some of the more common terms used today in regards to the avenues that an author can pursue a larger, paying audience for their books. (Books, largely meaning novels.) Traditional, or legacy publishing, is the process […]

You’ve heard of them on fanfiction websites, or from fellow writers who use them. Beta Readers. On the surface, Beta Readers are a dream-come-true – a group of eager readers who offer valuable feedback that you can incorporate into the never ending quest of improving your writing. In general, these are people who you know personally, […]