What an odd stocking stuffer, I thought—a five-inch Gumby-esque Wonder Woman, her limbs capable of metahuman positions. I tossed my husband a baffled look. No fan of the superhero, superpower stuff, I’ve always found my power in the ordinary, the everyday, the quiet people and deeds.   “But you have been a Wonder Woman, writing […]

Hello, Story Circle Network friends. It’s been a while. Life has indeed gotten in the way the last few months, so please forgive my absence here. The first week of June, on the fourth day of a beach vacation in Fort Morgan, Alabama, my husband and I walked down to the beach after dinner to […]

Okay, so I’m a little compulsive about contextual accuracy in my fiction writing. The smaller the detail, the more it delights me. The research for my historical novel took me across two countries and more than forty libraries and archives, in person and online. To me it was a treasure hunt, unearthing vital statistics, court, […]

How much research is enough? Fiction writers know the dilemma well. We want to know our characters intimately. How did their world look, smell, and feel to them? What did they eat, wear, have in their homes? How did they work, love, observe rituals, doctor themselves? The books and documents I amassed in researching my […]

The previous post, “Tough Story Love—How to Give It,” proposed some strategies for offering substantive, helpful feedback on someone else’s written work. Suppose it’s your turn to receive your readers’ comments. Nervous? Right! But most workshop leaders set the tone and establish guidelines for feedback, so it’s a pretty safe place to be. You can […]

How do we offer honest, valuable feedback to someone else’s precious, creative work? How do we respond to another person’s writing without a) simply patting the writer on the back and praising the piece, or b) going so negative that the writer wants to rip the story up and never write again? One way is through […]