Word-Nerds Unite! Affiliate with Supportive People and Organizations
Anyone who knows me, knows I am an eclectic and voracious reader, a writer/author, a book coach, editor, and writing mentor/teacher. In short, I am a word-nerd. I also like to affiliate with supportive people and organizations. I have loved words since the days when, in...
Writing Fiction and Making the Words Disappear
It may seem counterintuitive, since we work so hard at choosing just the right words when writing fiction, but one of my main goals during the editing phase is to make the words disappear on the page. I do this in such a way that the reader will forget she is reading, instead “seeing” the action in her head. While it sounds like a magic trick, it is in fact a fairly natural state for me. As a visual writer, I see the action as I write it. In fact, as I tell the people who ask me about my writing process, I often feel more like a journalist than a fiction writer, because I simply follow my characters around inside my head and write down what they do and say.
As a writer, one of the best things I can hear from a reader (aside from how much they loved the story and how much they want more) is that I made them late for work, or caused sleep deprivation because they stayed up all night finishing my book. The last thing I want to give them is the opportunity to set the book down to go do something else.