As an editor and book coach, writers ask me all the time -- Do you have any tips for writing a better first draft? Is there anything I can do to make this whole 'writing a book' thing easier!?

And my answer is YES! Focus your efforts and attention on learning how to write a strong,...

Publishers give many reasons why they don’t want to pick up a particular book.

For example, sometimes the story itself works, but the timing just isn’t right for the publisher. 

And if that’s the case, you can’t do anything about it except start writing something...

In today's post, I'm covering the obligatory scenes of the action genre. If you want to write an exciting action story that works -- and that satisfies fans of the genre -- then you need to nail these six key scenes in your novel.

I’m also going to show you how these key scenes manifest in...

What is a scene? And how do you write a scene that works?

In this post, we're going to talk about how to write a well-structured scene and then I'm going to walk you through my favorite method for structuring a scene. After that, I’ll show you how this structure shows up in one of...

Did you know that over 80% of adults want to write a book but only 3% ever get to 'The End' of a draft? That means that 97% of people who want to write a book never finish. Why is that?

In this post, I'm we're going to explore why so many novels go unfinished, and what you can do to ensure you...

Romance is one of the best-selling genres in mass-market fiction with a large fan base of readers who just can’t get enough. In today’s post, I’m going to go over the ten conventions that must be present in your romance novel in order to satisfy those readers and to write a...

How do you start writing a book? Are there certain things you should think about first, second, and third? If you're anything like the writers I work with, you've probably wondered some version of these questions at one point or another.

In this post, I'm going to walk you through five questions...

Do you ever feel like you're not making as much progress with your writing as you'd like to be making?

As a developmental editor and book coach, I work with many, many writers who have been stuck at the starting line or in the middle of a draft and who are not reaching the goals they’ve...

If you want to buy a house or a car, it's common practice to create some kind of strategic plan for getting there, right? You save up some money, you do some research, and eventually, you accomplish your goal -- you buy the house, or you buy the car.

So, why is it that when it comes to writing,...