Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 9

What Do You Do with Disappointment?

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I’ll get to today’s post in a minute, but I first want to do a quick tangent regarding some hot-off-the-press news…

Last night the Romance Writers of America (RWA) organization released the audit report by an independent law firm into how the ethics complaint against Courtney Milan was handled. (You can skip straight to the report at this link.)

Unfortunately, even though the audit was done by a law firm, they make some unforced errors...

Unreliable Narrators: The Pros and Cons

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This past weekend, I saw the movie Birds of Prey, the DC comics’ Harley Quinn movie produced by star Margot Robbie. Much has been made in various movie industry news and hot takes of whether the movie is “bombing” or not.

Many of the poor reviews are from male reviewers, and compared to similar sales figures and budgets for other movies, Birds of Prey‘s results are being presented and interpreted differently. In other words, sexism might...

Boring Love Scene? 3 Pitfalls to Avoid — Guest: Roni Loren

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No matter our genre, at some point in our career, we might need to write depictions of intimacy. Almost any genre can include a love interest, which might mean a love scene is in order (even if it’s light on the sex aspect).

I’ve written before abouthow to get over our dread and write sexy scenesfor our stories as well as how to decide the “right” level of intimacy for our story. But just because we’ve accepted the need to write love...

Do You Read Recently Published Books?

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I’ve done a good job of curating my Twitter lists, so I often come across insightful and educational threads. And then there are the tweets that just make me shake my head. *smile*

Late last week, I saw a conversation on Twitter that prompted a head shake and an audible “What?” Not that the people I follow had said anything wrong. In this case, my shock was with the replies.

The conversation centered on whether writers should read current...

Where Do You Want Your Story (or Career) to Go?

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This week we’ve been moving back into our house after the post-flood reconstruction. Rather than an empty house, I’m once again surrounded by furniture and boxes and boxes and oh my goodness, so many boxes…and I’m exhausted.

I’ve blown past my daily step-count goal by two or three times every day. I’ve gotten a ridiculous arm workout by beating dust out of the furniture as they’re brought in from storage. And I’ve gotten lots of stair...

Discovering What Matters: Editing and Your Life

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This week is full of chaos and exciting news for me!

Two-and-a-half months ago, a flood washed out the whole first floor of our house. Cue three weeks of an emergency pack-out and de-construction to rip out all flood-damaged material, then four-and-a-half weeks of reconstruction to rebuild our first floor, and finally—finally—this week we get to move back in. *whew*

The furniture all made it in from the storage unit yesterday, but today is...

What Do the Calls for Diversity Mean for Our Writing?

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Quick tangent before today’s post: After two and a half months, the last post-house-flood construction finishes today (*fingers crossed* that I didn’t just jinx it…), and we should be able to “move in” to our first floor again on Monday. Yay!

And…and! After nearly four years, my dentist finalized the last step of rebuilding my mouth yesterday after a bone-disintegrating infection ate a hole in my jaw bone.

(If you’ve been following the...

How to Bridge the Gap in Your Story’s Momentum

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It’s time for another one of my guest posts over at Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s Writers Helping Writers site. As one of their Resident Writing Coaches, I’ve previously shared:

insights on how to approach an overwhelming revision how to increase the stakes (the consequences for failure) in our story 7 ways to indicate time passage in our stories (and 2 issues to watch out for) how to translate story beats to any genre how and why...

How Can We Make Our Protagonist More Proactive?

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As I’ve mentioned before, agents and editors often talk about how characters need to be active (or proactive) rather than reactive or passive. That advice especially applies to our protagonist.

But new writers often struggle with what that idea means:

Should characters cause their own problems? Is the plot not allowed to happen to them?

Let’s first look at what it means for a character to be proactive and why it’s so important for our...

Reading Challenge: Overcome the Algorithms

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During this time of year, Goodreads often prompts users to sign up for their annualReading Challenge. The idea is to state how many books you plan to read over the year and then keep track of each book as you go.

I’ve participated in the challenge for the last couple of years and have had fun “beating” the numbers I listed.In 2017, I read 87 books (lots of time in doctors’ waiting rooms with all my health issues that year!), 2018 was 64...