Confession: I sold makeup online. And I was good at it!! I made it into the top 15% of an international company. Guess what? My friends still tell me they miss my makeup posts! My friends who don’t even wear makeup tell me they miss my makeup posts, and I haven’t sold makeup in two years!
What?!?! People actually miss my sales posts? Yup!
Continue readingI am super excited! I had an awesome discussion with my husband – who is an architect – and we came up with some great ideas for the castle, Anshan.
Anshan was built by people with a culture that echoes the Persian people. Given the importance of astronomy in Persian culture, Continue reading
I am loving the work I’m doing with my antagonists right now. I realized that I kept using my antagonists simply to foil my protagonists’ plans. Continue reading
I don’t know about you, but the holidays are a crazy time for us. We have 4 family birthdays between November and December, and our closest family members live an hour away. Lots of travel. Things get hectic. How do I survive all of that without losing my mind? Or my writing?
Here’s how I stay afloat when things get a little bonkers.
1. Prioritize
This is going to look different for everyone. Continue reading
Quite a jarring statement if you haven’t heard it before. Never fear: It’s a writing thing. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, a British journalist, critic, novelist, and professor gave the following advice:
Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it–wholeheartedly–and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.
When I first heard it, I thought it meant I was supposed to make my writing bland and generic. So I ignored the statement. Who wants bland writing? Continue reading
Writing can be an exercise in humility. When I first set out to write my current story, I was overwhelmed by ideas. The story haunted me for two years before I set anything down on paper. I had so many ideas crashing around in my head
that any attempts at writing an outline failed. I’d end up writing whole pages of dialogue and descriptive scenes.
Wow. Big problem for a writer, huh?
I know. I promise I’m not whining.
That comes later.
Where was I? Too many ideas. I decided my problem meant I needed to just write the thing down already. I ignored the advice given by so many authors, and I abandoned outlines in favor of writing unencumbered. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Continue reading
Emlyn Boyd 