Liz Flaherty's Blog, page 75

#WW: You Can't Edit a Blank Page

Sometimes I feel like there hasn't been a time I haven't been editing. In journalism school we edited and edited to get our news articles just so and once they were perfect on the page we printed them out and pasted up the paper. When I moved into TV news I learned that kind of editing was simple. In television they send you out in the big, wide world, tell you to shoot good pictures and get good interviews...and then come back and make the hour of footage you just shot into a story of a minu...

Liz and Nan Hit the Road

This is necessarily a short post today because Liz and I are on the road for our annual writing trip. This year, we decided to stick closer to home, so it's Madison, Indiana for our retreat. We actually booked rooms at Clifty Falls State Park way back in the early summer, but a couple of weeks ago, they called and canceled us because they're doing maintenance on the lodge. Kinda bummed us out, but intrepid as always, we soldiered on and found a new place to stay. It's an old hotel in Madison...

Show us how you really feel

This isn't a new post--I wrote it in April of 2016 for another blog, but I happened onto it and--since I'm pretty much buried here--hope you don't mind if I slip it in here.

One of my favorite parts of writing romance is that I get to explore emotion. I get to hold it in my hands and virtually peel it like an apple or a peach or a tangerine. Exactly like that, because sometimes the emotion is tart and sharp like an early apple; often it’s sweet and juicy like a peach; sometimes it’s almost to...

A Plan for Self-Editing

This was how I felt when I reread my manuscript. Not happy.Last week I was telling you my tale of woe regarding the manuscript I’m hoping to get into shape and submit to a publisher. I’d written this manuscript a couple of years ago and then put it aside. I thought it was fairly decent, but when I reread it, I was bummed out. It needs reworking. I wallowed in disappointment for a while, and then in an effort to get myself unstuck, I started to think of ways I could revive and renew this manus...

Romance Writers Gone Wild Giveaway

Happy Friday! I signed up to participate in what is the Mother-of-all-author-giveaways next week… at least it is to me, given my limited experience. I am one of 100 authors in the multi-genre Romance Writers Gone Wild giveaway event going on next week (November 13-17), and it’s mind-numbingly huge!

If you haven’t signed up to attend this party and get some of the goodies they’re giving away, do so right now! Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/events/144781006139014/ I’ll wait while you...

Letting the Muse Out

by Margie Senechal

My Confession: With the exception of this blog and a few book reviews over on Goodreads, I have not written in weeks.

I have a myriad of reasons excuses. For example, I've been under the weather for a while. As I write this, my head is throbbing from a sinus headache which a collection of drugs and green apples--read that one on FB--have yet to vanquish.

Because of a co-worker's vacation followed by Christmas prep, my schedule's been all over the place. This week I had Monday...

Life's what happens... @Nan Reinhardt

...when you're making other plans. Nan's life is going to change--for the good--when her family moves back to the Midwest soon after living in California for a long time. To make sure the kids really do move, Nan and Jim are spending some days helping them with the move. So Nan says. This is the only picture I've seen. You be the judge. :-)



In case you don't have it yet, don't miss getting your copy of Saving Sarah . It's a good, empowering story, the Wranglers' favorite kind!



Nan will be back n...

When You Come to the Fork in the Road... @Jim Cangany

Hi, folks! I hope you all had a great weekend. First off, I’d like to thank Liz for inviting me to visit with you all today. It’s my second time to visit, so thanks, Liz!So, what brings me by, you may be asking? Well, I’d like to take a tiny bit of your time to talk about being an author in transition. You see, after spending my entire writing career spinning contemporary romance tales, earlier this year I came to a fork in the road, and following the advice of legendary baseball player and p...

Getting Stopped Cold

A couple of Mondays ago, Liz wrote that she was happily writing along, the words flowing nicely, until she was stopped cold when she realized her characters were doing things that were totally out of character.

I know the feeling. At least, I know the feeling of being stopped cold in my writing because of a loss of belief in the story. As Liz can attest, it’s heart-wrenching, and worse, it’s difficult to get interested in the story again and continue writing. Fortunately, after a few days away...

Glum as the weather

I’ve missed posting a Friday blog the past two weeks, and I apologize. It’s not because I didn’t write one… I just had serious issues getting it to actually appear. The situation was a perfect example of PICNIC. Problem In Chair Not In Computer.

Meaning: I screwed up.
First week, I neglected to hit “publish”… and was well on my way to Florida and unable to rectify. Oops. The next week, when I hit “publish” it still didn’t show. My Wranglers pals couldn’t even find it. Uhhh, that’s because I sel...