I’ve been listening to a lot of the back episodes of the podcast No Such Thing As A Fish. It often makes me laugh. The facts they discuss always spark my curiosity. And sometimes, something they talk about makes me pull out my phone and dictate notes so that I can use an idea for a …

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to get my writing done before breakfast. I used to eat breakfast first, so that I was fully fueled before hitting the page. But for health reasons, I’ve been trying to push my first meal a bit later. Thus, I’ve been writing first. And it was going great. …

For the past few weeks, I’ve been playing around with new ways of triggering and then expressing my creativity. For example, I wanted a unique location and backstory for a particular part of my book. And I thought it would be fun to make it have some horror elements. But that’s all I had. So I turned to …

This evening’s writing session is brought to us by thunderstorms.I have an app on my phone where I’ve put together a mix of storm sounds. I play this when I’m writing my draft. The irony, as I realized during tonight’s actual thunderstorm, is that real storms don’t calm me down. I love them, but I’m usually …

While walking today along a path I’ve taken many times, it occurred to me that writing is like my walks. Even when I’m going down the same path – building characters, developing plot, filling in details – I always find something new and exciting.I never know what I’ll find on my walk. Like the sunlight hitting …

I’m at that point in my writing where I focus on making the villain as strong a character as possible. To help me with that, I’m brushing up on my writing craft. Which includes reading 13 Steps to Evil: How to Craft Superbad Villains by Sacha Black.Because how can there be strong conflict without a powerful …