• It's easy to stick to what you know when writing. If your manuscript is starting to feel bland, here are some tips to spark a visual experience to your r...

    How to Create a Visual Experience in Your Writing

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    When writing, it’s so easy to get bogged down with dialogue, plot lines, verb tense, and comma placement. We can get so caught up with that we can forget to push our creative boundaries. Becoming fixated on punctuation can cause our descriptions to go flat. Other times, we may avoid using symbolism in writing because it feels too advanced for the current writing level. It’s easy to stick to what you know. If your manuscript is starting to feel like dialogue mixed in with a bunch of bland back story, give symbolism, description, and color a try. Here are our…

  • A common mistake my editing eye has picked up on is the use of filler words. These words elongate your book but don't advance your story. Here are 10 wor...

    10 Words to Cut From Your Manuscript

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    Editing your own writing will never be the easiest part of the writing journey, but knowing what to look for can make the task a whole lot simpler. Working with the publishing company Xulon Press for a decade now has taught me a lot to say the least. A common mistake my editing eye has picked up on is what I like to call the use of filler words. Excessive use of these words elongates your manuscript but does not advance your story.  As a rule of thumb, avoid using words that end in -ly, such as quickly, readily, suddenly,…

  • By beginning and ending them in the perfect moments of your story, your chapter breaks can build suspense and keep your readers reading. Try these tips f...

    Tips For How to End a Chapter

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    At some point in writing your manuscript you’ll be faced with the decision of where you want your chapter breaks to go. How you end your chapter is especially important in a novel. By beginning and ending them in the perfect moments of your story, your chapter breaks can build suspense and keep your readers reading. For some, deciding where chapters end might be a challenging decision. Whether this is you or not, these next few tips for ending chapters are sure to be helpful for your next writing session: Don’t Include Chapters In Your Outline. A lot of writers…

  • Most write goals down for the new year and forget all about them a few months later. Here are some ways to set some new, attainable goals & stick to them...

    Writing Smart Goals for the Month

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    You don’t have to wait for a new year, month, or week to start to make some new smart goals. The beginning of a new year makes many of us feel like we need to write down huge dreams and goals for the year, but come March or April we probably fall off track. But have no fear, today is a great day to set some new, attainable goals for this month. Here are some ideas to get you started: 6 Goals to Set This Month 1. Set a reading challenge on Goodreads. This challenge lets you set how many…