A couple weeks ago I took my 2-year-old to the Phoenix Art Museum–and she loved it. Her favorite exhibit was filled with modern art and was titled, “Order, Chaos, and the Space Between: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection.” This was one of the pieces. She got super excited and […]
Yes, you heard me. Writing is like kissing. Kissing, like writing, works better (or at least tends to be more interesting) if there’s a second person involved. We’ll call that person the audience. If you want your kiss (your writing) to go really well, it is often helpful if you know your audience. Also, kissing […]
Writing is like building a bird’s nest. It’s easy to get stuck with writing, to think, “I have nothing new to say.” As the oft-repeated Biblical proverb says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Most of the time the point of writing is not to create something new, but rather to assemble the available […]
New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson wrote: Sit in a chair and write. Ignore this thing they call writer’s block. Doctor’s don’t get doctor’s block; your mechanic doesn’t get mechanic’s block. If you want to write great stories, learn to write when you don’t feel like it. You have to write it poorly before […]
Last Saturday I attended the YA Writing Conference, hosted by Changing Hands Bookstore, the best indie bookstore in the Phoenix area. It was a little different setup than other conferences I’ve attended. There were four classes available to take, and each person could sign up for three of the classes. Each class was an hour […]