I facilitate a weekly Writing Practicum, where a core group of dedicated writers workshop their projects.



One of our members is a very talented writer who specializes in BDSM erotica. The rest of the group -- including me -- are, to put it mildly, "vanillas." We are simply not equipped to intelligently comment on the parts of her writing that make it fall into either the BDSM or erotica genre. We don't read it. And we certainly don't "get it."



We're very good at discussing… Continue

or, The Devil is in Zac Efron's Details



I recently had the extreme misfortune of seeing a film in which everything that can go wrong with both writing and directing came together in a glorious, ghastly, gooey mess and intended to write a post on the Charlie St. Cloud Drinking Game.



(For those wondering, the Game includes such rules as:



* Take a drink every time a character calls a friend or family member by name, and



* Drink every time… Continue

Few truisms exist in writing. For every writer who swears by an outline, there is one who swears at them. For every writer who needed an agent to make it big, there is one who did just fine without one.



But some universals do exist.



One is: A Writer Writes. (This has a huge “duh!” factor, but you’d be surprised how many people talk about writing or fantasize about it without actually doing it. This doesn’t make them writers any more than fantasizing about being… Continue

Don’t judge a person, the old adage advises, until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. Or her heels.



I recently experienced, on a small scale, what was very close to a mile in an agent’s life. I confess my eyes were opened to nuances in the submission process that escaped me while walking in my regular Writer’s Shoes. It’s amazing how quickly one learns what makes a submission stand out, what rubs one the wrong way, and what is clearly a waste of everyone’s time when the shoe is on… Continue