November 9, 2026 · 6:00 am

Resources for writers #writing

I always felt undereducated about writing. As a single mother working two jobs, my options for a formal education were limited, so I chose to educate myself. I knew books on the craft of writing existed, and the local library stocked a few. But they were written for people with more education about the craft than my scant two years of college had blessed me with, and it was hard to know which handbooks were the best for what I hoped to write.

Fortunately, in 1990, I discovered a book offered in the Science Fiction Book Club catalog: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card.

I’ve said this before, but I will repeat it: The day that book arrived in my mailbox changed my life. That day, I stopped feeling guilty for thinking I could be a writer.

The next book I bought was in 2002: On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King.

For writers beginning the journey today, self-education resources are easy to acquire and affordable. New writers can find many great handbooks, such as: Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook, by Ellen Potter and Anne Mazer. While it is written for middle graders, adults just starting out will find good advice in this book.

From the official Blurb: In Spilling Ink: A Young Writer’s Handbook, you’ll find practical advice in a perfect package for young aspiring writers.

After receiving letters from fans asking for writing advice, accomplished authors Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter joined together to create this guidebook for young writers. The authors mix inspirational anecdotes with practical guidance on finding a voice, developing characters and plot, making revisions, and overcoming writer’s block. Fun writing prompts will help young writers jump-start their own projects, and encouragement throughout will keep them at work.

Are you writing a memoir, but don’t know how to get started? I’ve mentioned this book before, and it is still useful: Ready, Set, Memoir!

From the official Blurb: Written by former NaNoWriMo Program Director Lindsey Grant, Ready, Set, Memoir! is full of helpful lists, exercises, inspiring quotes from famous memoirists, advice, lessons, and humor to help walk you through the writing process. This guided journal will inspire and motivate you to write—and finish!—your memoir.

But maybe you are ready to move beyond the beginning stages and need more advanced information.

My personal library of books on craft is huge. I can’t stop buying them. But which books do I refer back to most often?

Here are the books that form the foundation of my reference library:

  1. Damn Fine Story, by Chuck Wendig
  2. Dialogue, by Robert McKee
  3. Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, by Ursula K. Le Guin
  4. Story, by Robert McKee
  5. The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi, and I also have the companion books in that series.
  6. The Writer’s Journey, by Christopher Vogler
  7. VERBALIZE by Damon Suede and its companion book, Activate.

How do we source information for our work? Research is crucial for injecting realism into worldbuilding and character development.

Most people start an online hunt for information by “Googling” a question, no matter what browser they use. Nowadays, we must be wary of AI misinformation as well as other, possibly dubious, sources. Read and cross-check several articles to get a broader view of what you are looking for.

Also check the post dates to ensure the information is current. Bookmark the sites that are relevant to your work. I will admit that your browsing history may look a little odd after a while.

Question: How many bodies of average-sized adults can you fit into the trunk of a Mini Cooper?

Answer: None. The Mini Cooper has no trunk.

Some libraries have a service where one can submit a question and have it answered by email. If that isn’t an option and we’re feeling ambitious, we can check out books on any subject.

Online resources for authors to bookmark in general:

www.Thesaurus.Com This is good for when I need to know, “What’s another word that means the same as this word but isn’t weird or repetitive?”

Oxford Dictionary online is brilliant for when I need to know, “Does this word mean what I think it means? Am I using it correctly?”

Wikipedia – The font of all knowledge, or so I hear. My go-to source of info is often Wikipedia. This resource is created and edited by volunteers. All articles must provide proper citations and reference links to outside sources to support every statement. Articles that don’t meet specific criteria are flagged. Some opinions may be presented as facts when discussing art or literature. But overall, I always find something useful by looking at the links in their footnotes and going directly to those sources.

Also, check out:

www.writersdigest.com

The Creative Penn

Creative Writing Now

You can learn just about anything on YouTube. That’s where I learned how to make a glass orb and how medieval swords were made. Here is a link to Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube series on the craft of writing: Brandon Sanderson’s Writing Lecture (2025) – YouTube

Grammar and Mechanics matter – never doubt this. They are the traffic signals that keep our narrative flowing naturally and ensure your work is understandable to all readers. Find a style guide that you can understand and follow easily.

I use Bryan A. Garner’s “The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation.” It distills the information creative writers need and is far easier to understand than the Chicago Manual of Style, which is geared toward professional editors.

Maybe (like me) you came up in the world of business before the computer revolution. If so, you may be familiar with several other grammar style guides. Each is tailored to a particular kind of writing:

Your best resource is a good writers’ group.

A good group is the best way to learn about this craft. Your area may have several established writers’ groups, and some may accept new members. Google “writers’ groups” in your town, search for them on Facebook, and make inquiries at the local library, as they may know of one.

Attend a few meetings as an observer to see if this group is a good fit for you.

If you don’t feel comfortable meeting in person or via Zoom, look for online writers’ forums that fit your needs. I participated in an excellent online group, Critters Workshop, for several years while testing the waters of my local writing community.

In 2010, I gained a wonderful local group, and we still meet weekly. My fellow writers are a never-ending source of support and information about both the craft and the industry. We write in a wide diversity of genres and gladly help each other bring new books into the world. But more than that, we are good, close friends.

So now you have my short list of self-education resources for authors. I hope this helps!

Leave a comment

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , ,

November 6, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Giant Redwood Trees of California – Albert Bierstadt, 1874

Artist: Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902)

Title: Giant Redwood Trees of California

Object type: painting

Genre: landscape painting

Date: 1874

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 65.5 in (166.3 cm); width: 54.5 in (138.4 cm) (With frame)

Location: Berkshire Museum, Massachusetts

What I love about this painting:

Albert Bierstadt shows us a summer afternoon deep in the redwood forests of Northern California. The tiny figures of two native people seated on a rocky ledge above a stream demonstrate the incredible height and girth of the forest giants. A third woman carries a basket toward them from their camp at the base of an immense, burn-scarred tree. California Redwood trees have evolved to be fire resistant, thanks to the frequent wildfires the West Coast of the US experiences.

There is a mystic quality to this scene, an emotion that Bierstadt was adept at depicting.

I was privileged to visit Redwood National Forest in my late twenties, and must say that this image, accurate as it is, barely scratches the awe and majesty inspired by these endangered giants. It felt like a fantasy world, a place that couldn’t possibly exist, but which now informs my worldbuilding.

And yet it did exist and still does, albeit in pockets that are all that activists were able to save, a mere 45% of the original forest. California redwoods gateway is returned to Indigenous tribe. ‘That’s healing our people too’ – Los Angeles Times

This area was the ancestral home of several different Indigenous nations, including the Yurok, Tolowa, Hupa, and Karuk, as well as smaller groups such as the Sinkyone. I would guess that the native people depicted here are of the Yurok tribe.  Yurok Redwood Groves — Sacred Forest, Living Relationship | Mythic Grounds

Albert Bierstadt had the ability to show the grandeur and beauty of the American West. During this turbulent time, he was one of the few artists who understood what the Westward Expansion meant for the Indigenous People who were forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands. The main criticism he faced was the critical disapproval of his inclusion of Indians in his landscapes.

About the author, via Wikipedia:

Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not the first artist to record the sites, but he was the foremost painter of them for the remainder of the 19th century.

Despite his popular success, Bierstadt was criticized by some contemporaries for the romanticism evident in his choice of subjects and for his use of light, which they found excessive. Some critics objected to Bierstadt’s paintings of Native Americans, believing that including Indigenous Americans “marred” the “impression of solitary grandeur.”

Bierstadt was born in Prussia, but his family moved to the United States when he was one year old. He returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. He became part of the second generation of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along the Hudson River. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. Bierstadt was an important interpreter of the western landscape, and he is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Albert Bierstadt – Giant Redwood Trees of California – Google Art Project.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Albert_Bierstadt_-_Giant_Redwood_Trees_of_California_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg&oldid=1036486009 (accessed November 4, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Albert Bierstadt,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Bierstadt&oldid=1365544126 (accessed November 4, 2026).

Leave a comment

Filed under #FineArtFriday

Tagged as , , ,

November 2, 2026 · 6:00 am

#NovelNovember: Should I do this?

October has ended, and here in the Northern Hemisphere, the dark days of November are upon us. This is a great time of year for writers to hunker down and get writing.

While NaNoWriMo no longer exists, many of us still see November as the big writing month. ProWriting Aid has a free event going on, and it has all the best aspects of the original NaNoWriMo without the drama.

Last month I mentioned that I participated in ProWritingAid’s Novel November in 2025 and had a great time. I posted about my experience here: #NovelNovember has ended, my book isn’t done, and once again, I’m clueless #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

I am participating again this year. The website is simple enough for an old luddite like me to navigate, and you can get badges for each milestone.

A virtual badge? To some, that may not sound like much, but when the first days of creating a new story pass and excitement fades, writing becomes work. Each badge is a visible goal, an incentive to keep pushing ahead.

If ProWriting Aid’s free, no-strings-attached writing event doesn’t appeal to you, many other online writing challenges and groups try to keep the original spirit of NaNoWriMo alive. I have listed the links to four of them at the end of this post.

Whether you join an online challenge or not, November is a good time to get serious about the story you have always believed you could write.

Perhaps committing to a personal challenge works better for you.

Maybe you will challenge yourself to write for one hour every day for thirty days.

Or, perhaps you are aiming for a specific word count, hoping to get the basics of your novel written.

Some of us plan to write a chapter a day on our current work in progress.

Or maybe, as I did one year, you decide to write a short story every day. In 2015, I took a different path from the usual novel-in-thirty-days approach. I named my project November Tales. I suffered from a bout of pneumonia and worked from my bed for most of the month. Even so, I managed 42 short stories, all fueled by Nyquil and desperation, totaling 107,000 words.

This mess included ten terrible poems, along with chapters 7 through 11 of Bleakbourne on Heath.

The following year, November began with a severe case of bronchitis. I named my project November Tales 2016 – 30 Days of Madness and Pot Pies. I started by writing short stories, flash fiction, drabbles, and poems. Within five days, I was writing the first draft of a novel and managed to pound out 90,000 wonky, misspelled words.

Others will write poetry and other short forms, and still others will focus on journalism and write op-eds and personal essays.

Perhaps you choose to write a blog post every day for 30 days. (Now that is difficult. I manage two a week and sometimes only one.)

Over the next few months, authors embarking on the journey of writing their first novel will hear many rules about the craft of writing. Don’t worry about grammar and mechanics at this stage of the game. Please write the story as it falls out of your head. Don’t worry too much about the rules until you get to the revision stage.

Getting those ideas out of your head now matters most. You can iron out pacing, structure flaws, and grammar hiccups in revisions.

courtesy Office360 graphics

When we are just beginning on the path to becoming an author, we feel guilty for taking the time to indulge in such a profoundly personal pleasure. Life tosses up roadblocks, and developing a regular writing habit is difficult.

We have jobs, families, duties to our community, and many other demands upon our time. We have all the extra work and activities that come along with living our lives.

As a single mother raising children in the 1980s, I could only write for half an hour or so at night. I wrote after my children were asleep, pouring my angst into song lyrics. Many times I wrote while my children did their homework. I was there, able to help, but I was doing my own “homework.” That original grounding in music is why my poetry rhymes and has a rhythm: I’m a songwriter at heart, and a melody is always floating around in my head.

The most important part of developing a writing process is finding one that works for you.

Give yourself permission to try different things until you find something that works.

  • Do you work best in short bursts?
  • Are you at your best when you have a long session of privacy and quiet time?
  • Or is your process something in the middle, a melding of the two?

What if my style changes? What if the way that worked last month no longer works?

Give yourself permission to change, to find a way that does work. Be willing to be flexible.

Balance is the key to a happy life. We want to feel productive and creative, and we need to share our lives and interests with our family and friends.

Therefore, authors must set aside time to write. This lets us be creative while still supporting our families, who all have activities and interests of their own.

Being a writer means being supremely selfish about every aspect of life, including family time.

  1. It also requires discipline and the ability to set aside an hour or so just for that pursuit, a little time where no one is allowed to disturb you.

A good way to ensure you have that time is to encourage your family members to indulge in their own interests and artistic endeavors. That way, everyone has the chance to be creative in their own way during that hour, and they will understand why you value your writing time so much.

To be happy, you need a balanced life. Don’t become so obsessed with writing about fictional lives that you aren’t present in your own.

Maybe you need a challenge to spur you into action:

Novel November™ by ProWritingAid: The Free Writing Challenge

Reedsy Studio Writing Challenges

Pathfinders Writing Collective

AutoCrit Novel 90 Writing Challenge

There are many, many more challenges out there. Just Google “writing challenges” and see if one suits your mood.

And whether you choose to participate in an online challenge or not, write when you can and enjoy the process of getting that idea out of your head and onto paper.

4 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , ,

October 30, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Winter Landscape by George Henry Durrie 1859

Artist: George Henry Durrie (1820–1863)

Title: Winter Landscape

Date: 1859

Medium: oil on canvas

Dimensions: height: 18 cm (7 in)

Collection: Yale University Art Gallery

 

What I love about this painting:

Worldbuilding is much easier if you can find an image of some sort with information about both the scenery and way people went about their daily life. Wikimedia Commons is an invaluable and free resource. One can find everything from ancient Egyptian and Sumerian art to Renaissance art, to modern art, and so on to photographs showing modern aircraft and images of our universe taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

When I need to imagine a rural 19th-century farm setting, George Henry Durrie is one of my go-to artists. He faithfully reproduced the way farms were laid out and detailed the way those families lived.

I love the calm sense of home that he instilled in his landscapes. In this scene, we see a man following a sledge hauling logs for firewood. They will be off-loaded into the woodshed and then cut into shorter lengths for fireplaces and stoves. Each section will be split before they are stacked in cords to dry. Green wood, that which is cut from a living tree, doesn’t burn as well as dry wood and isn’t suitable for cooking.

Another use for those logs could be for repairing fences. If that is their use, they will be split and stacked to dry.

Courier and Ives,  a New York City-based printmaking business operating from 1835 to 1907, bought the rights to publish his work and made it possible for everyone to have artwork in their homes.

He was considered “too popular” by critics in his day. They dismissed his work because, even into the 20th-century, every ordinary working-class family had a calendar or print hanging in their home featuring one of his illustrations.

I certainly would have owned one.

 

About the Artist, via Wikipedia:

Durrie was born in New Haven, Connecticut, one of six children born to John and Clarissa Clark Durrie, who were Hartford natives. The Durries moved to New Haven in 1818, where John Durrie became a partner in the printing firm of Durrie and Peck, stationers and book publishers. He attended Hopkins School in New Haven. In 1837 John Durrie contracted with Nathaniel Jocelyn, a noted New Haven engraver and portrait painter, for painting instruction for George Durrie and his brother John. By 1839, George Durrie was painting portraits professionally in Hartford and Bethany, Connecticut, and in 1840, he was working in Meriden and Naugatuck, Connecticut.

For many years, Durrie made a living primarily as a portrait painter, executing hundreds of commissions. After marriage, he made frequent trips, traveling to New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey,  and Virginia, fulfilling commissions and looking for new ones. His diary reveals that he was an enthusiastic railroad traveler, in the early days of the railroads. Durrie also painted what he called “fancy pieces”, whimsical studies of still lives or stage actors, as well as painting scenes on window-shades and fireplace covers. But portrait painting commissions became scarcer when photography came on the scene, offering a cheaper alternative to painted portraits, and, as his account-book shows, Durrie rarely painted a portrait after 1851.

In Durrie’s time, winter landscapes were not popular with most curators and critics, but nevertheless, by the time of his death, Durrie had acquired a national reputation as a snowscape painter. Durrie died in 1863, at age 43, probably from typhoid fever, not long after Currier and Ives began reproducing his paintings as prints. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:George Henry Durrie – Winter Landscape – 1932.281 – Yale University Art Gallery.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:George_Henry_Durrie_-_Winter_Landscape_-_1932.281_-_Yale_University_Art_Gallery.jpg&oldid=1211644386 (accessed October 28, 2026).

Wikipedia contributors, “George Henry Durrie,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Henry_Durrie&oldid=1375908429 (accessed October 28, 2026).

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under #FineArtFriday

Tagged as , , ,

October 26, 2026 · 6:00 am

November writer: What are we #writing and why?

Tales of all lengths and genres have their beginning in a vague idea, something that you think might make a good story. The basic structure of all narratives is similar across genres.

First: Who are the players? If you are like me, you had the idea for a group of characters when you decided to write something. Maybe you want to write about your life experiences.

Second: What genre are you most drawn to as a reader? Do you see your work as a fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, thriller, romance, or memoir? A fiction project is easier to create if you know the genre you are writing in.

Perhaps you write both Cozy Romances and Military Thrillers. (Or other different genres). Consider using a different pen name for your second genre’s work.

Do you feel the urge to write poetry or songs? My poetry explores the fantasy that is the memory of my childhood home. When poetic words grip your imagination, write them down.

Free verse is a modern form that often doesn’t rhyme, but the cadence and pacing of the syllables still have rhythm. Traditionally structured poetry includes Odes, Haikus, Elegies, Sonnets, Dramatic Poetry, or Narrative Poetry.

Third: Setting. Where does the story happen? Does it take place in a real-world urban environment, or a created, future, or alternate world?

What kind of environment and set dressing do our characters see as the story opens? Show them in their comfort zone.

What level of technology do we have at our disposal? Do you have personal knowledge of this, or have you researched it?

Fourth: Narrative voice: Who is telling this tale? What do they have to say about it? Again, if you are like me, one character will begin to dominate the conversation.

Will you write it in first-person point of view or third-person? CAUTION: If you write it from the second-person point-of-view, it may read like the walk-through for an RPG.

When you write poetry or a memoir, you are telling the story by detailing your thoughts and experiences.

Fifth: The quest. This is the reason for the story. What pushes our protagonist out of their comfort zone? What is the point of no return, the incident that kicks the story into motion?

What do they lack, and how can they resolve it?

Why is this quest important, and what hindrances will they face? What is the worst-case scenario if their plan fails?

Fifth: The antagonist. Who or what blocks us from completing our quest successfully? Not every enemy is a person. Sometimes we must battle the aftermath of an earthquake or wildfire. Other times it is a storm or drought. Natural disasters inspire great stories.

When the antagonist is a person, human or alien, the key is to write them so they are not cartoonish. Write them as if they were as well-known to you as the protagonist is. Unless we are writing a comic book or comedy, we want our evil genius to be both menacing and with motives that are completely believable.

Sixth: Theme: A fiction project is easier to create if you can see the central theme that will bind it together. Whether writing a novel or short story, ask yourself what the central theme is. Theme is the core thread, such as love lost and regained or coming of age.

I find that writing to a theme helps me write a tale with a coherent arc and a relatable quest.

Seventh: Outline or not? Will you “pants it” through the plot or create a plot outline? Outlines are just me thinking out loud on paper. I work both ways when it comes to short stories.

Eighth: How long will this story be? I write a lot of short stories. In the beginning of your writing life, your work might be short forms too.

My publishing train was derailed for three years when my husband fell ill with late stage Parkinson’s. He passed away in July of this year and I am almost back to where I can cope with the finer details of publishing a professional looking book.

I have three novels in the works, one that has been completed and edited and left unpublished. I also have enough stories for a collection, which may be published before the novels. Short story collections work best when they are all in the same genre, and a theme or setting binds them together, featuring a recurring character or location. I do this for one series, but I’ll have to rely on a theme for the other collection.

  • Anthologies feature a group of different authors, each contributing a short story in the same genre and centered around a specific theme.
  • Short story collections feature the short works of one author, hopefully in the same genre. Genre is important, and if you write in multiple genres, don’t mix them. If you’re writing sci-fi or fantasy, you can get away with mixing them, but organize the book so each sub-genre is in its own section

To wind up this rant: I’ve had a blessed life. I write whatever I am in the mood for and have the time and opportunity to write. Free time is a luxury, one I appreciate more with each passing year. I have a group of fellow writers I can depend on for good advice and support when life is hard.

Writing is a budget-friendly pastime. Many free, excellent online resources are available for those facing financial struggles but who want to learn more about the craft of writing. Many cities and towns have writing groups that will accept new and beginning authors.

One excellent and free online group for new and beginning writers is Critters Writers Workshop. Take a look and see whether that group fits your needs.

Writing good work doesn’t happen overnight. You will spend time, years even, to get that vision written, revised, edited, and ready for publication. It takes an incredible amount of work and a continuing habit of self-education to grow as a writer.

But that effort is so worth it.

Writing only becomes expensive when you reach the publishing stage. When your novel, memoir, or short story collection is finished, please consider hiring a freelance editor even if you plan to find an agent and go the traditional route.

This will be money well-spent.

Finally, if you are in the “just starting out” phase, please know that you are not alone. When you hold the finished product in your hand, you will know the struggle was worth it.

3 Comments

Filed under writing

Tagged as , ,

October 19, 2026 · 6:00 am

Let’s write Micro Fiction #writing

I often write micro fiction, especially when I’m not inspired to work on my longer pieces. These tiny tales begin with an idea, as all the things we want to write do.

Longer works sometimes stall at different points in the process. At first, we’re fired up about the project. As we write, the words flow, but then we come to days when we stare at the screen, unable to think of what to do next.

That is when we need to set the project aside for a day or two.

But we shouldn’t stop writing. If we don’t nurture the habit of writing every day, it’s easy to forget to go back to it.

This is when I find myself writing micro fiction. Drabbles are a form of micro fiction, an entire story in exactly 100 words.

Some forms of poetry, such as haiku, are not micro fiction, as they don’t tell a fully developed story.

I find the time to write every day, even if it is only a line or two in my journal. This keeps me in practice. When I was young and raising a family, this habit showed them that writing was an important part of my life. I sat in a corner with a notebook, writing instead of pretending to enjoy the tired, poorly acted, badly written movies of the week that everyone seemed to love. ABC Movie of the Week – Wikipedia

I was an introvert in high school, as many ADD children are.  I loved a good story and always had a book to read at lunch. I had plenty of practice at ignoring the snide comments the cool kids whispered when they thought I couldn’t hear.

Later, as a young adult I discovered that if I couldn’t find the kind of tale I was looking for, I could write it myself.

All writing is a time commitment. I can dash off a drabble in five minutes, but it might take an hour or more to fit the story into the 100-word constraint.

We have 100 words to write a scene that tells the entire story of a moment in a character’s life. First, we need a prompt, a jumping-off point. A prompt is a word or visual image that kicks the story into motion in your head. If you need an idea, go to Reedsy’s Weekly Writing Prompts. I love that page, as the prompts change every week.

But prompts are only the beginning. To write a story of any length, we need these essential components:

  • A setting,
  • One or more characters,
  • A small conflict,
  • A resolution.

I use a loose outline to break every story’s arc into three acts, each with a specific word count. (I’ve included a graphic at the bottom of this post.) A drabble consists of  only 100 words, but it is outlined in this way:

  • I have about 25 words to open the story and set the scene.
  • I have about 50 – 60 for the heart of the story.
  • I give myself 10 – 25 words to conclude it.

Writing micro fiction teaches you to tell a story without exposition and to use words that convey strong images.

Novels are a little different: When I plan a novel, I divide my outline this way: 10,000 or so words to open the story, set the scene, introduce the characters, and get to the inciting incident. 50,000 or so words for the heart of the story. 10,000 or so words for the conclusion. It usually expands to around 125,000 words before I trim it back to around 90,000.

Whether it is a drabble or an epic novel, I delete exposition and backstory in the second and third drafts. Although sometimes the drabble wants to be a short story.

When I delete sections of longer works, I save them in a separate file because some ideas help establish mood and atmosphere for world-building. Other sections are good for character development and use in other, longer works.

  • Every word you write and discard might be useful in a later story.
  • Label the file with a title that says what it is.
  • Save it in a master file that contains ideas for longer stories.

If you finish the drabble, you have created a small gift for yourself. The surge of pride that you experience in that moment of “Yes! I can write after all!” is a wonderful reward.

But why should we try to write something that short?

Writing to a strict word count limit means that every word is precious. Word choices must be strong and used to create the greatest effect. When we shave away the unneeded info in the short story, we have more room to expand on the story’s theme and how it supports the plot.

This list of venues currently accepting submissions of micro fiction (100 to 300 words in length) comes from the home page at Barnett Ghostwriting:

  1. Barnett Ghostwriting
  2. SmokeLong Quarterly
  3. Flash Frog
  4. Nanoism
  5. Vestal Review
  6. Tiny Molecules
  7. Flash Fiction Magazine
  8. New Flash Fiction Review
  9. Microfiction Monday Anthologies
  10. Ellipsis Zine

I am unfamiliar with Barnett Ghostwriters, so I can’t vouch for them. Check SFWA’s Writers Beware before you submit your work anywhere.

Also, you may be only writing for your own pleasure. Maybe you don’t wish to submit your short works to anyone. Even so, don’t delete them. Each one can be a springboard for a longer work.

Or you might want to submit it to a drabble contest.

Contests for micro fiction abound online. Whether you choose to submit a drabble to a contest or hang on to it doesn’t matter. Either way, writing micro fiction hones your skills, and you will have captured the heart of your brilliant idea.

Micro fictions are the distilled essence of novels. They contain everything the reader needs to know about that one moment in time.

More importantly, you will have written your story, and that success is a reward in itself.

Leave a comment

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , ,

October 16, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Sunset in the Winter by Julius von Klever 1891

Artist: Julius von Klever (Russian: Yuly Yulyevich Klever)

Title: Sunset in the Winter (Russian: Закат солнца зимой)

Date: 1891

What I love about this painting:

This is the first time I have come across Julius von Klever, and I will definitely be looking for more of his work.

I particularly like the depth of color, how even though dusk is shading towards night, it’s not quite there yet. The sun’s reflection on the frozen stream is just the way I have seen it in other places and other times.

I love the boat drawn up to shore, the way it looks as if it has not been usable for many years. The same with the house. Some thatch is missing and a pair of shutters are partially hanging off the windows. It may be someone’s winter hunting lodge, unused for several years.

Or it could be abandoned.

Someone trudges up the path, carrying a pack over their shoulder. Are they the long-absent owner, or a traveler looking for shelter? Will they reoccupy the old place? Will this house be repaired and once again be a place where fond memories were made?

About the Artist via Wikipedia:

Julius Sergius von Klever, (Russian: Yuly Yulyevich Klever), (31 January 1850 – 24 December 1924), was a Russian landscape painter of Baltic German descent.

His father was a chemist who taught pharmacology at the Veterinary Institute. He displayed artistic talent at an early age and took lessons from Konstantin von Kügelgen.[1] After completing his primary education, was enrolled at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts where, at his father’s insistence, he studied architecture. After a short time, however, he began to take landscape painting classes; first with Sokrat Vorobiev, then Mikhail Clodt.

In 1870, he was apparently expelled from the Academy, for unknown reasons.[1] Undeterred, he started exhibiting his works. In 1871, one was purchased by Count Pavel Stroganov and, the following year, his painting “Sunset” was acquired by Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna. In 1874, he had his first solo exhibition at the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. After Tsar Alexander II expressed interest in his work, he was named an “Artist” by the Academy, despite having not graduated. In 1878, he became an “Academician”

In the late 1890s, a friend of his from the Academy was implicated in a scandal involving gambling and embezzlement. He was drawn into it and suffered a nervous breakdown that forced him to give up painting temporarily. In 1908, he went to Germany with his family to avoid the situation and lived in Neustrelitz until 1915, when the war forced him to return home.

Three of his four children became painters; Maria (1878–1967) a theater artist, Julius (1882–1942) who taught at the Art and Industry Academy, and Oscar (1887–1975), a theater artist who also designed costumes.

For the full biography of this artist and his historical significance in Russian art, go to:

Julius von Klever – Wikipedia

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE: Sunset in the Winter by Julius von Klever. Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:1891. Закат солнца зимой.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, File:1891. Закат солнца зимой.jpg – Wikimedia Commons (accessed October 15, 2026).

[1] Wikipedia contributors, “Julius von Klever,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Julius_von_Klever&oldid=1363359786 (accessed October 15, 2026).

Leave a comment

Filed under #FineArtFriday

Tagged as , , ,

October 12, 2026 · 6:00 am

Narrative Voice – who is telling the story and when did it happen? #writing

Today’s post is a bit involved, but bear with me, because beginning a story with the wrong narrative voice can lead to that place where we just aren’t interested in our project anymore.

Three things combine to tell the story to the reader:

  1. Narrative point of view is the perspective, a personal or impersonal “lens” through which a story is communicated.
  2. Narrative voice is how a story is communicated, the author’s fingerprint.
  3. Narrative time, or what we call tense, affects our perception of character development.
  • In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually shown by how we use the forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation The main tenses found in most languages include the past, present, and future.

Narrative time/tense shows us the event’s location in time. The author’s choice of verb tense shapes our perception of when the story happened in relation to the protagonist’s current state. That choice tells us when an event happened relative to another time, past or present.

Narrative voice affects a reader’s perception of characters in subtle ways. It should be an undercurrent that goes unnoticed after the first few paragraphs. It shapes the reader’s view of events subliminally.

I’ve used the following sentences as an example before: “I eat,” “I am eating,” “I have eaten,” and “I have been eating.”

All are in the present tense: eat, am, and have. Yet, they are different because each conveys unique information or points of view about how the action relates to the present.

Subjunctives are small verbs of existence, but just like adverbs, they are telling words. These words fall out of our heads and into our narrative in the first draft because we are just trying to get the story down. In the second draft, they are signals telling us what needs to be reworded.

Subjunctives are hard to spot. Forms of “to be” can be found in subordinate clauses where something is mandated or required:

  • I demand the prisoner be fed the same as anyone else.

BUT how does this relate to the topic at hand?

What if my characters are stranded in a desert? Should I write, “They were hot and thirsty“?

A sentence like that leaves nothing to the reader’s imagination. “Were“ is a subjunctive. The reader is on the outside, looking in.

This is where our choice of narrative time/tense comes into play.

Our job is to take that experience of thirst and make it immediate. No matter what narrative point of view we’re writing in, strong verbs affect narrative time and change everything.

Which sentence feels stronger, more pressing?

  1. They trudged on with dry, cracked lips, yearning for a drop of water.
  2. I walk toward the oasis with dry, cracked lips and parched tongue.

Each sentence says the same thing, but we get a different story when we change the narrative tense, point of view, and verb choice.

Narrative voice, verb tense/time, and expanded imagery combine to change how we perceive the characters in that moment.

Strong verbs best describe our characters’ actions and emotions. They connect the reader to the immediate situation our characters find themselves in.

For my short story, View from the Bottom of a Lake, the narrative tense that worked best was a past tense, close third person.

Peggy Jayne smiled. Beneath the green-glittering gaze, her toothsome smile flayed her daughter, leaving Sarah breathless, panicking and longing for her lake.

Sometimes the only way you can get into a character’s head is to write them in the first-person present tense, which happened to me with Thorn Girl. I struggled with her story for nearly six months until a member of my writing group suggested changing the narrative tense and point of view.

Once I did that, the story fell out of my head the way I had envisioned but couldn’t articulate, and I wrote it in one evening.

My first instinct is to shake my head and back away.

But I don’t. Long ago, my Lady told me that in every life, a time will come when you arrive at a precipice. You must either leap the chasm or fall to your death.

I stand at that place now.

That switch made that particular short story so much easier to write. Remember, in a traditional first-person point-of-view story, the protagonist is the narrator. No one ever has complete knowledge of anything, so the first-person narrator cannot be omnipotent. Her lack of knowledge is the story.

It is crucial for authors to write short stories as well as longer pieces. They force us to tell our stories from different points of view and encourage us to experiment with using a different narrative tense than we normally gravitate to.

Every story is unique, and some work best in the past tense, while others need to be in the present. Regardless of the narrative tense, your voice is unique. Your habitual word choices are unique.

That is why only you can tell your stories.

Credits and Attributions:

Quote from View from the Bottom of a Lake, © 2020 Connie J. Jasperson. Story first appeared in the anthology Escape, published by the Northwest Independent Writers Association and edited by Lee French.

Quote from Thorn Girl, © 2019 Connie J. Jasperson. Story first appeared in the anthology Swords, Sorcery, and Self-rescuing Damsels, edited by Lee French and Sara Craft.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under writing

Tagged as , , ,

October 9, 2026 · 6:00 am

#FineArtFriday: Two visions of “Greenwood Lake in Autumn” by Jasper Francis Cropsey (revisited)

I first showed these paintings in October of 2018. Today we’re featuring two beautiful images of Autumn in New England in the mid-nineteenth century. They are both painted from the same beach on the shore, at what was clearly a favorite time of day.

Jasper Francis Cropsey created many paintings of Greenwood Lake, a freshwater lake on the border between New York State and New Jersey, beginning in 1843. The above image is titled “Autumn on Greenwood Lake.”

The second painting is titled, “Autumn in America.”

Over the next few decades, Cropsey painted numerous scenes of the area, many from the same viewpoint on the lake as today’s featured paintings, each with varying intensities of color. Something about this lake and this beach captured the artist’s heart.

These two paintings were done years apart. What really intrigues me is the difference in the way he depicts the light and the changes in Cropsey’s style. In the second painting, he has moved away from the classical style of his early works and embraced luminism.

The second painting was done in an early autumn, and the first was painted later in the season. In both paintings, we see cows drinking at water’s edge. In the distance and nearly hidden by shadows, we see fishers and their rowboat.

However, the scenery has slightly changed in the second painting, as the landscape does from year to year. There is more debris in the second, and the shrubbery seems more mature. Cropsey’s skills have matured as well, and he has gravitated to deeper, more intense colors by the time he made the second painting.

The sun is in the same place as in the first, but it feels later in the evening. The autumn haze completely hides the hills.

Clearly, this was a place that was beloved by the artist, as he returned year after year, and made many landscapes of this lake and the surrounding area.

About the artist (Via Wikipedia):

Jasper Francis Cropsey (February 18, 1823 – June 22, 1900) was an important American landscape artist of the Hudson River School. He was best known for his lavish use of color and, as a first-generation member from the Hudson River School, painted autumn landscapes that startled viewers with their boldness and brilliance. As an artist, he believed landscapes were the highest art form and that nature was a direct manifestation of God. He also felt a patriotic affiliation with nature and saw his paintings as depicting the rugged and unspoiled qualities of America.

Jasper Cropsey died in anonymity but was rediscovered by galleries and collectors in the 1960s. [1]

Credits and Attributions:

IMAGE 1: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Jasper Francis Cropsey – Autumn on Greenwood Lake – Google Art Project.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Jasper_Francis_Cropsey_-_Autumn_on_Greenwood_Lake_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg&oldid=867315579 (accessed October 7, 2026).

IMAGE 2: Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Jasper Francis Cropsey Autumn in America.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Jasper_Francis_Cropsey_Autumn_in_America.jpg&oldid=926171886 (accessed October 7, 2026).

[1] Wikimedia Commons contributors, “File:Jasper Francis Cropsey – Autumn on Greenwood Lake – Google Art Project.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Jasper_Francis_Cropsey_-_Autumn_on_Greenwood_Lake_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg&oldid=867315579 (accessed October 7, 2026).

Comments Off on #FineArtFriday: Two visions of “Greenwood Lake in Autumn” by Jasper Francis Cropsey (revisited)

Filed under #FineArtFriday

Tagged as , , , ,

October 5, 2026 · 6:00 am

How participating in writing challenges shaped me #writing

From 2010 to 2023, I participated in an annual writing rumble called National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. It was an annual creative writing challenge held in November each year. It began in 1999 in San Francisco with a group of twenty-one writers challenging each other to write a 50,000-word novel in thirty days. Over the years, it grew into a multinational event, an annual convergence of writers from all over the world.

For the first eight years of my participation, it was fun. During my ten years as a municipal liaison (ML) for that now-defunct organization, I discovered that there is no one way to begin and complete a novel or any other writing project that fits everyone.

However, some of us get more done when we have a deadline, even a self-imposed one.

The joy went out of NaNoWriMo once the national leadership changed, for reasons well documented on YouTube. Both my Co-ML and I became disgusted with its overtly corporate direction and walked away a year before the organization fell apart.

But November happens every year, and it’s still a great month to get that novel out of your head and onto paper.

I got involved in that annual challenge when a young writer in the Philippines, whom I met through a gaming website, mentioned he planned to participate. I had never heard of it, but since I had started and sort of completed several rambling, incoherent novels, I was intrigued.

I wasn’t sure I could do this crazy thing. But when I broke down the numbers, I saw that all I had to do was write 1,667 words daily. That was something I could do if I dedicated three hours an evening to it. I told my husband, and he said to go for it, even though I didn’t know what to write about.

Everyone who knows me will tell you that fear of failure has never stopped me from ruining my life. So, I googled the national website and signed up. I chose the handle dragon_fangirl. Through the website, I discovered that my town had a large group of participants in various stages of their careers, some who’d never written a thing, and others with several books published.

I started going to their “write-ins,” meetings at coffee shops and libraries where we got together and wrote furiously for one or two hours as a group. We commiserated and discussed our progress, and in the process I found a cadre of friends who became the core of my writing group. I am still writing with them.

During that first year, I rose at 6:30 a.m. on November 1, 2010, filled with trepidation. I opened a new document, gave it the title of “NaNoWriMo novel,” and saved it,

Then I stared at my laptop, with no idea where to begin or even what I wanted to write.

I had been working on an urban fantasy for several years, but I wanted to do something new. An idea had been lurking in the back of my mind for a Don Quixote-style character. But I also wanted to write sword-and-sorcery.

I read Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote as a teenager (at my father’s behest) and borrowed (stole) the heartily misogynistic adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser from Dad’s nightstand, along with any other lurid and unsuitable novels that happened to be lying around.

I loved any kind of fantasy, from sword and sorcery to Arthurian mashups to epic high fantasy. The first words I wrote for that year’s novel were: There was a cabin in the woods.

It was a banal beginning, but it gave my idea a jumping-off point. I just began telling the story as it fell out of my mind. Surprisingly, I discovered my word count averaged 2,500 to 3,000 words daily. By day fifteen, I knew I would have no trouble getting to 50,000, and by November 21st, I had passed the 50,000-word mark.

At the 68,000-word point, I had completed my rollicking tale of snark and medieval derring-do. It was utterly unpublishable, but I didn’t know that until after an unfortunate experience with a predatory publisher.

The one thought that comforted me during that rough beginning was the fact that I had written the basics of a story I would have sought out at the bookstore.

After that fiasco, I turned to other writing projects for several years. I had written the storyline for an anime-based RPG that was never published because of a lack of funding and the tech crash. I still had the rights to my story and maps, so I wrote it as a novel, had it edited by my current editor, and published it. Three more novels set in that world followed.

Then my friends suggested I could rewrite the novel that my first publisher had ruined and republish it. After my wounds had healed from the bad publishing experience, I took the novel apart and separated the three main character threads. Over the next ten years, those threads became three books: Huw the Bard, Billy Ninefingers, and Julian Lackland.

All three novels are set in that original alternate medieval world, and center around the same group of characters. Much of what was originally written could be reused.

I learned how to lay down a first draft through participating in my local NaNoWriMo group. The wonderful people I met during those years helped me gain the tools I needed to turn a first draft into a properly finished book.

If you have the idea for a novel and want to get it out of your head while you are enthused about it, I suggest you write at least 1,670 words every day. At the end of thirty days, you will have written slightly more than 50,000 words.

This takes me about 2 hours of stream-of-consciousness writing, as long as I don’t go back to correct misspelled words. I do have an outline to follow, which has grown into a storyboard. This plan of action helps me know what should come next.

Many excellent writing challenges have emerged since NaNoWriMo’s downfall.

If you are looking for something to spur you into action this November, check out:

Novel November™ by ProWritingAid: The Free Writing Challenge

Reedsy Studio Writing Challenges

Pathfinders Writing Collective

AutoCrit Novel 90 Writing Challenge

And SO many more. Just Google “writing challenges” and see what you might be interested in

Last year I participated in ProWritingAid’s Novel November and had a great time. I posted about my experience here: #NovelNovember has ended, my book isn’t done, and once again, I’m clueless #writing | Life in the Realm of Fantasy

Comments Off on How participating in writing challenges shaped me #writing

Filed under writing

Tagged as , ,