I’ve been asked recently to talk more about beta readers. Beta readers are the brave and generous souls who read through manuscripts before they are published. They help to make sure the plot structure makes sense and doesn’t have any gaping holes; they keep an eye on character development to ensure that each player has…

Taking a few moments to come up for air . . . The other day, this quote landed in my email inbox, care of the Sierra Club’s Daily Ray of Hope email: “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” ? C. S. Lewis Naturally, I thought of…

What are your audio preferences when it’s time to write? Several years ago, I wrote a short piece for The Writer about different writers’ favorite sounds when it comes to getting busy with the words. Some writers have very specific aural tastes?ranging from white noise to classical music to birdsong?while others told me that “silence…

Several weeks ago, I blogged about frustrations with the cloud and email. I’d like to report that I have significantly reduced the number of messages in my inbox?now hovering just below 1200, so there’s still some work to do there. I have experimented with archiving older email messages and entire folders to Evernote, an app…

Self-publishing isn’t for everyone?and not every self-publishing option is “one-size fits all.” I read a great post by Anne Trubek this morning about the path that she took into self-publishing her essay and photography collection, Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology, and about the upfront costs involved in the route that she chose. This sparked…

I hear a lot of aspiring authors and journalists talk about how writing is their passion. Yet these are often the same people who don’t write as much as they’d like to (or think they should). I’ve been wondering about that disconnect. I suppose I look at writing as more of a tool or a…

Last night, I participated in an event at the Tigard Public Library that was organized by the Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA). Essentially a bunch of us writers showed up to sit at tables scattered around the community events room, and people with questions about writing and publishing could sit down with us individually to…