History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Finding a Writing Voice

| November 2, 2020

Whether you’re just starting out or an established author, you’ve probably got a writing voice. You may not have found it entirely when you’ve first started, and you can be equally unaware of what your voice is if you’ve been writing for a while. But when you read a snippet of a story and you […]

Poetry Forms: Clogyrnach

| October 26, 2020

I’ve been interested in trying some of the Welsh poetry forms, but I find a lot of them intimidating due to their requirements for meter and rhyme. While the Clogyrnach also includes those requirements, they seem a little more friendly in this shorter form. The Clogyrnach (pronounced Clog Ear Nak) is a Welsh poetic form […]

NaNoWriMo Advice

| October 19, 2020

I’ve talked before about why I personally don’t do NaNoWriMo anymore, but despite that, I still have advice for NaNoWriMo folks, based on my experience in past years! I think NaNoWriMo is valuable for newer writers, and even some experienced writers who need the proverbial kick in the pants to get started on a project. […]

Finding a Writing Spot

| October 12, 2020

Finding the right place to write is a task that all authors need to figure out. Many of us, myself included, started out writing wherever, which was mostly in the lovely rust-colored chair in the photo. I had my pillow for back support and a tray for my laptop to keep it from overheating, but […]

Setting Writing Goals

| October 5, 2020

Setting goals as an author is a fine balancing act, because there are a lot of things that are outside of your control. You could set a goal to have stories published in certain markets, find an agent for your novel, or win a prestigious award, but you can’t entirely control those things happening. Sure, […]

Poetry Forms: Diminishing Verse

| September 28, 2020

Diminishing verse is an interesting form. There aren’t requirements related to meter or rhyme, but instead to the last word of each line of the poem. You begin with one word at the end of a line, and then the next line removes one letter (or more, according to one source) from that specific word […]

When is the Best Time to Write?

| September 21, 2020

There’s a lot of writing advice that tells new authors that they should write every day, that they should make time in their schedule for writing, and so on. And while in an ideal world, authors could write every day, the reality of life is that many of us don’t have that luxury. Instead, I […]

Writing Down Story Ideas

| September 14, 2020

I’ve got notes in a variety of places that are meant to be story ideas, but not all of them seem to work as such. This article has an explanation of why that might be, and advice on what you can do to make your written down story idea notes work even if they sit […]

When the Story is Too Big

| September 7, 2020

We recently watched Bill and Ted Face the Music, as Jeremy and I are both huge fans of the original Bill and Ted movies. And while we enjoyed the most recent entry into this franchise, we both agreed that it paled in comparison to the previous movies. The biggest problem that we identified was that […]

Poetry Forms: Fibonacci

| August 31, 2020

If you’re looking for a really interesting poetry form to try out, check out the Fibonacci. This form uses the numerical pattern of the Fibonacci sequence as the syllable count for each line (ooh boy, MATH!). So your first and second lines both have one syllable, and your third line is the sum of those […]