Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 152

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!   To those of you who celebrate, I hope you are having a peaceful and love filled day. Enjoy it.  Take notes even about the less enjoyable elements.  These will be things you can draw into your writing throughout 2020. –SueBE

Most Popular Posts: Don’t Dumb Down Your Characters

Yesterday I posted about fitting your writing in during the holidays.  A lot of it comes down to making smart choices and using your time wisely.  I’m doing this, in part, by not writing new posts for the rest of the year.  Instead I am going to repost my five most popular posts. My fifth […]

Writing: How To Be a Writer During the Holidays

If you are anything like me, you may be a writer but you are also a wife, a mom, and any number of other things – choir member, PTG president, etc.  So I don’t need to tell you just how busy this time of year is.  How do you manage to find time to write? […]

Writer’s Work Spaces

The writers that I know work in a variety of places.  My friend Kris loves to write in coffee shops.  I’ve tried it.  Apparently, I’m a hobbit.  Everytime someone with food walks past me, I look up.  “Mmm.  That looks yummy.” Another friend told me that she checks out a study room at the local […]

Picture Books: Know What Is Being Published Now

When I saw that Matt de la Peña had done an NPR interview on picture books that are loved in his household, in spite of hip deep Christmas preparations, I took the time to click through and listen.  De la Peña is the 2016 Newbery winning author for the picture book Last Stop on Market Street.  Reminder, the Newbery […]

Tropes: Using them to their best advantage

During a recent snowday, my family took our positions in the family room and watched Anna.  For those of you who don’t know the movie, she is a beautiful girl who is also a brilliant Russian assassin.  “How many times are they going to make the same movie?” asked my son. “We saw the same thing […]

Secondary Characters: How They Relate to Theme

Just today as I was working on my cozy, I had to create yet another secondary character.  Honestly, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the secondary characters.  I’d created a pair of friends, spouses, parents and kids.  There were other members of the choir, the choir director and more. Then yesterday, I […]

Sticking It Out for the Long Term

Last week I was reading an interview with a “long standing” author.  I always read these posts because I want to know how people make it work.  What do they do right so that they are still here? And then it hit me.  I had my first sale was in 1996.  That’s 23 years ago.  […]

What Is Your Brand: Do You Need a Logo?

Mention marketing or branding and most writers stampede for the door.  I have to admit that 90% of the time, I am one of those writers.  But this past week I’ve been doing less writing and more stuff. Some of it is household stuff – pre-Christmas cleaning so we can decorate this weekend. Some of […]

Writing for Kids: What It Means in the Age of The Wall

David Bowles grew up in a border town in south Texas.  He remembers never seeing a character that was like himself in the books he read.  No one was a US Latino.  No one had to work through the same realities.  This is why he decided to become a writer. When he was asked to […]