Feel stuck in your life? Want more? Feel like you deserve more? Want to learn more about the unseen science of how Universal Laws operate? Based on Dr. Stout’s newest release, Finding Your Fire & Keeping It Hot, all students will receive a free eBook, from which the class will begin and go beyond.
Registration is open! Limited to 25 people! Register now!
Wild Women Authors has reviewed my book, Love’s New Beginnings, and interviewed one of the main characters. Check them out!
A forced partnership that neither Charlene or Logan wants means facing their trust issues head-on. Can they survive these new beginnings?
In Keri’s first blog she talked about what she wished she’d known before publishing her first book. Here, she talks about what she’s doing right.
Many of her mistakes were mine, too. I find that via the questions many new writers are asking in various online writers’ groups I belong to, that they’re making the same mistakes, as well.
Babies don’t come with instruction, neither is there one handbook for new writers. However, there are lots of books, media groups, and local/regional groups where new writers can find help. And thankfully, there’s always Google!
People look at me and see success. Published in multiple media, in multiple genres, with various awards. With an MFA and a Ph.D., too, but there have been many failures along the way.
I have failed so many times I’ve lost count, from beginning, middle, and end.
In the beginning, I couldn’t get anything published. I tried big publications, national publications, regional, and small publications. All submissions boomeranged back. Once in a while, I’d get a handwritten note at the bottom of the mimeographed rejection, saying, I like your voice, or Please submit to us in the future…
Behind the Scenes with Diana Stout, MFA, PhD
Today, I have a guest blogger.
Keri Kruspe, fellow writer and friend, writes this blog and shares with you her experiences as a first-time author and what she wished she had known beforehand. I wish I had known, too.
Behind the Scenes with Diana Stout, MFA, PhD
This month’s question: What personal traits have you written into your character(s)?
My response isn’t about specific traits but rather the one thing that drives the character(s), and which often says a lot about their traits.
For more information about The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
May 1 question: What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
My experience would have to be when I first started publishing. One of my earliest publications was to a small magazine and it was about finding the positive in anything and everything, including the not so positive experiences we go through from time to time.
The day I got my copy, I got a phone call from a reader who lived in Oklahoma. I lived in Michigan. He was quite direct wanting to know what my day was like right then and what was so positive about it.
I must admit, that day wasn’t the best day for me. I paused.
Right away, he quipped, “Ha, I knew you couldn’t do it.”
“Give a minute,” I said. A few seconds later, I found my positive and told him.
He paused and said, “I guess you showed me that we can find the positive if we’re willing to look around and think about it.”
The fact that my little article could reach someone halfway across the country like that was a powerful message to me that I needed to take care about what I wrote.
More than ever that holds true in today’s social media and e-mails. We have the power to help or to hurt. I’ll choose to help every time.
Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!
Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer – aim for a dozen new people each time – and return comments. This group is all about connecting!
Weekend Writing Warriors / #WeWriWa / #8sunday
Welcome to the Weekend Writing Warrior blog hop where writers share an 8-10 sentence snippet of their writing, published or unpublished.
My snippet this week comes from the first novella in a series of seven, Shattered Dreams. Drafts for #2 and #3 have been written. The last four plotted out. My plan is to start publishing them by the end of the year. What’s fun is that the characters come in and out of each other’s stories, as they should as one or both of the couples went to school together and all remain in the same community. Oh, and there is a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle that is pulled out of the lake in #1 with a mystery surrounding it.
As a waitress, Shelley is in the diner’s freezer, having propped the door open with a brick. She stumbles, exclaiming out loud, and in the next instant, Mason is there beside her asking if she’s alright. She’s startled, bumping into him, which tips over a bucket of pickles that moves the brick, which seals them in darkness.
SNIPPET:
Shelley heard him moving around. “Where are you?”
“Smile so I can see you.”
Shelley chuckled, unable to help herself. So like Mason to joke when there was a problem.
She heard him moving. “What are you doing?”
“Let’s pretend we’re blind, and we’ll talk with our hands.”
“We are blind. It’s dark, remember? Besides, I can’t see your hands.”
“That’s the point. We can use the braille method.”
