On Writing – Page 3 – Liana Brooks

Archive by category "On Writing" (Page 3)

Why Don’t We Quit?

“Why are we doing this?” My crit partner looked back from the computer screen. She’s on spring holiday in Australia and we were Skyping to discuss plots, goals, and problems. “I dunno,” I said, which was eloquent for that time of night. Being best friends with someone on the other…

How To Write A Query Letter

QUERY(n) – the letter a hopeful author sends to an agent or editor with the express wish of getting the manuscript off their desk and onto someone else’s publication schedule. The query is an essential part of the publication process even for Indie Authors, it’s also one of the…

Know When It’s Time To Walk Away

I’ve always been a big believer in writing regularly. Good habits are hard to make, and keeping a regular writing schedule helps an author in the long run. However, as the years have passed, I’ve veered away from the Write Every Day! camp towards the idea of Think Every Day….

Serious Vs Silly

Winter is coming. Not the good-fun winter with Jon Snow saving the day and Sansa coming home to Winterfell. No, the real winter is coming, with familial obligations, cold weather, and seasonal depression. Some people have claustrophobia and hate the feeling of the walls closing in around them. Cold weather…

Draft By Draft – How Books Get Written

One of the first lessons a novelist learns is that writing a book is not like writing an essay in school. The dynamics are different. The time factors are different. The end results are different. The drafts are different. With an essay it’s common to finish a full draft of…

Morning Pages

Years ago when I first published a book and broke the news to my family that their child was –gasp!- a writer my father asked if I did morning pages. If you have followed my family’s shenanigans online you know this is 100% a normal response to finding out your…

When Books Write Themselves

Funny story… last year, while I was working on the ending of BODIES IN MOTION, the ending for the series was headed in a different direction. The plot for Book 2 centered around everyone’s favorite engineer, Rowena Lee, making peace with the grounders and eventually falling in love with one….

Fancasts as Writing Tools

Fancasting… it’s often see as something writers do to avoid actually writing. It’s treated like a stall tactic. But, if you want a diverse cast and want diversity in your books, it’s actually good way to get a headcount of what diversity is available. The fancast above is for my…

New Year’s Resolution: How To Start A Novel

So, you want to write a book? Good for you! Maybe you’ve daydreamed about being a Real Author for years. Maybe you set a goal as a child to pen the next Great Novel. Maybe you have hazy, romantic ideas about what authors do (spoiler alert: we sit at our…

Writing, Apples, and the Alchemy of the Mind

Listen. Every authors hits a stage in their book where they question everything, where they doubt themselves, where they want to give up. It happens because you are comparing a working draft to finished manuscripts again. Which is a bit like asking why apples on the tree don’t taste like…