dawn.vogel | July 8, 2024
Another panel I was on at the WriteHive Online Conference was Historians on History. With a couple of other historians, archivists, and writers of historical fiction, we talked about doing research for our historical stories and how to avoid certain pitfalls of research rabbit holes (not always successful) and how to deal with difficult history […]
dawn.vogel | July 1, 2024
Many writers who are not perfectionists in other aspects of their life suddenly seem to develop this trait when faced with an imperfect draft. They become certain that if their first draft isn’t beautiful, it’s not worth calling it finished, and they tinker with it ceaselessly. I’m here to say: let it go. Your first […]
dawn.vogel | June 24, 2024
While talking about books and authors with my mother-in-law a couple of weeks ago, she realized she had read two of the books by a best-selling author we know, but she’d missed that there was a third book. I showed her the cover for the third book, to see if she recognized it (since she’d […]
dawn.vogel | June 17, 2024
During the WriteHive Online Conference this a couple of weekends ago, I was one of the panelists for “Making Each Word Count: A Short Story Master Class.” We had a great conversation about writing and publishing short fiction, from our individual perspectives and offering advice to authors who are interested in that length. The other […]
dawn.vogel | June 10, 2024
Last week, I talked about writing concisely, which is something I’m pretty good at. This week, I’m talking about the flipside of that, which is also one of my weaknesses as a writer–filling in the details. When I sit down to write, I generally picture the scene I’m writing as I go. In addition to […]
dawn.vogel | June 3, 2024
Some authors write long pieces, and when they get to the end, they realize they could benefit from learning to write more concisely. Other authors (like me) write very sparsely to begin with (and wind up having to flesh some things out during revisions). If you’re more in the former camp than the latter, here […]
dawn.vogel | May 20, 2024
If you’re looking for a site with loads of positive writing advice and encouragement, check out Positive Writer. Though it doesn’t seem to be updated recently, there’s still a wealth of great information there for writers! There’s a page that lists all of the posts (under Archives), so you can skim through and look for […]
dawn.vogel | May 6, 2024
I recently came across Marie Vibbert’s post about her self promotion and social media strategies recently, which she concludes by looking at the impact (or lack thereof) on sales. It’s a great read, and her results fly against some of the common wisdom dispensed to authors. This is not to say that you should delete […]
dawn.vogel | April 29, 2024
Before There Were Stars is a little different from most of the card-based writing tools I use. It’s designed to be a storytelling game rather than writing prompts, but the way the game is set up, it works well as both! In the game, you tell mythic stories about a fictional group of people, based […]
dawn.vogel | April 22, 2024
I’ve been back in the swing of working on some form poetry, so I’ve got some new-to-me forms to talk about! The haiku sonnet is a combination of the haiku (or senryu) form and the sonnet form. It also has aspect of the tanka form, which I talked about recently. Simply put, it’s four related […]
