How many times have you stared endlessly at a single word on the page, thinking, It’s close, but it’s just not the RIGHT word. Then you mosey on over to Thesaurus.com, (or if you’re old school, break out an actual thesaurus), search for synonyms of the word only to find that NONE of them are the right word either?  … Read more

So, you’ve just finished writing your (possibly very messy) first draft! Which means it’s time to start the revising.  When I finish a first draft I immediately start to think about my revision plan and soon (after a much-needed break!) you should too!  Here are the 5 things I focus on for my first revision  … Read more

This tip will help you manage your list of revision tasks with efficiency (and sanity!) It’s a trick I picked up over several months of revising BETWEEN BURNING WORLDS (the sequel to my sci-fi space opera, SKY WITHOUT STARS). During the revision period of this book my co-author and I had a lot of super  … Read more

If you have a chapter that’s feeling a bit…well, meh. Try out this Writing Mastery hack! One of the best ways I’ve found to quickly power punch up a scene is to use a tactic I like to call… Hiding the Ball Basically it breaks down to this: Don’t give your reader EVERYTHING they need  … Read more

One of the hardest things a writer has to do is cut scenes from their novel that they really love. In this video, I share with you my tried and true quick test for deciding which darlings to keep and which ones to kill.  A lot of times in the drafting phase, we might get  … Read more

Have you ever found yourself staring down a page or chapter in your revision, knowing you have to cut or rewrite major chunks of text, and thinking, “I DON’T WANNA DO IT!” Or maybe you say to yourself, something along the lines of, “But I love that passage! It’s some of my best work!” But we all  … Read more

So, there you are. You’re writing like the wind. Things are going well. Words are flowing. The story is epic. The dialogue is snappy. And then SCREECH! You suddenly slam on the brakes because, wait a second, something is wrong. Everything you thought was going to work suddenly just…doesn’t.  Why??? YOU HAVE NO IDEA! Uh-oh. This is  … Read more

Imagine if someone handed you a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle and told you to put it together. “Fine,” you say, “what is it supposed to look like? Do you have a picture of the final product?”  “No,” comes the callous response.   Then you turn over all of the pieces to find that they’re completely blank. There’s  … Read more