Flirting With a Timid Muse
by Jackie Gamber
© 2011: All rights reserved.
Please contact the author for permission to re-post.
I have a personal fantasy that goes something like this: I’m sound asleep (or washing dishes, or mowing the lawn), completely minding my own business of snoring (or stacking plates, or watching the mower spit shredded grass), when suddenly, I’m seized. I sit straight up in bed (or at the sink, or in the yard) and am struck so hard with an idea that it literally rattles me. Makes my teeth ache. And …

Five Things That Are Harder To Overdo Than You Think
by Cat Rambo
© 2011 All rights reserved.
Please contact the author for permission to re-post.
One of the things writers do best is second-guess themselves. We keep tweaking, twiddling, moving this word here, that word there, changing from present tense to past and back again. But there are aspects of writing that we may restrain ourselves from unnecessarily, because we think we’re overdoing them when we’re not.
Getting inside your character’s head: It’s okay to spend some time in there, even within the constraints …