Tag Archive for tips

Will writing nonfiction help your fiction writing skills?

Absolutely… to a certain extent. Fiction emphasizes creativity and imagination in order to construct believable characters, dialogue and plot. Nonfiction prepares you to write other elements of the novel, such as, narrative, description, or scene, and to blend them together seamlessly into a story. Nonfiction writing also prepares you for novel writing when you want to add layers or to increase the depth of your scenes.

However, if you pour too much of your nonfiction skills into your novel, it will take control of your fiction elements. I am guilty of making this mistake. Here are some symptoms to look out for when nonfiction writing has invaded your novel: Read more

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Resources for Bloggers: Only a click away

Resources for blogger: only a click away
Other than visiting sites of writers online, I am also checking out other bloggers’ sites to read their tips about blogging as well as to seek advice on how to maintain and take care of the technical side of blogging. Since I am using the wordpress.org green widgetize template, I seek blogs that explain how to customize the template to suit my purpose as well as for plugins to simplify the task. I’m also seeking other blog tips in general.

So far I’ve found the following sites to help with the technical side of blogging:
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How to turn your blog to be more reader friendly

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I am so busy writing my blog five days out of every week since August that I’ve neglected to dress my blog for success. Since I started blogging on writing, writing tips, reviewing books and more, I have always become entangled on the technical side of setting up the wordpress theme to make sure it will be more presentable to you – the reader. If it was a house, I must admit it is still a mess, and I’m unable to tidy-up the guest room.

Now that readers have stumbled upon my site I still haven’t spruced-up the layout so they will be comfortable and enjoy their visit. Please forgive me, but even if I am familiar with the computer scripts, the technical sides of blogging just wears my brain out. There are so many themes; so many plugins and widgets to chose, yet so little time to peruse them all.

Do I have a choice? Can I just blog without taking care of the technical issues? The answer is a big fat NO! I forgot that when I decided to set up my blog, I am also responsible for the layout, the widgets and security so that when my guests come for a visit they feel safe and don’t receive a big fat pulsing headache when viewing the layout. So, I have to drag myself to tidy-up the layout.

In order to make the blog more reader friendly, I have installed several plugins for my wordpress green theme. Here are several of the tasks recently performed:
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Creative nonfiction: memoir. How to write a memoir?

While I am familiar with writing fiction – like novels, short stories, etc. – writing creative nonfiction like a memoir is something new. As I have found out, a memoir is a very popular genre nowadays. A memoir is written not only by popular figures, but by many who’ve already established themselves as fiction writers.

So, what exactly is a memoir? A memoir is an essay, about an important part of the narrator’s (writer) life that she or he wants to share. In this case, then, a memoir is no different than an autobiography, right? You probably questioned it as I did when I read the definition of the memoir. No, there is a difference according to the book I am currently reading titled Writing the Memoir by Judith Barrington.
Here is how she differentiates the autobiography from the memoir:
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