Sue Bradford Edwards's Blog, page 159

Novelty Books: To Make a Sale, You Need More than a Manuscript

“Do not try to illustrate your work if you aren’t an illustrator.”  In my opinion, and it is NOT a humble opinion, this is one of the hardest ideas to get across to would-be picture book authors. Imagine my surprise when I read Salina Yoon’s post on Tara Lazar’s blog, “If You Build It, It […]

Space Opera: Exploring Science Fiction and Fantasy

Just yesterday, I was puttering around in cyberspace when I spotted something on space opera.  What caught my eye was a quote – “I associate the idea of space opera with appallingly bad writing.” I skimmed further and spotted this from the Oxford dictionary. They say that space opera are known for being simplistic and […]

Mood Rings: Why Aren’t You Making Progress Today

    For Friday I thought we’d go with something light.  I don’t know about you but I loved mood rings when I was a kid.  Unfortunately, my hands tend to be cold so some colors just never happened.  Still they sure were fun. Enjoy this humorous take on the Mood Ring for writers.  When I looked […]

Fiction or Nonfiction: Which One Do You Choose?

When you find a compelling story, one of the decisions that you need to make is whether you are going to write it as fiction or nonfiction.  There are a number of factors that impact my decision. I will write the story as nonfiction if: I can find the complete story.  If I can find […]

The Things We Assume

Yesterday I read a post by Rheea Mukherjee about Negotiating Social Privilege as a writer.  Her post made me think about the things that we assume. Cell phones.  Write a story without cell phones or a story where a plot point hinges on a dropped call and people will challenge you on it.  I’ve seen […]

Shaking Things Up: Making Big Changes

Last Thursday as he left for work, my son dropped a request in my lap. “I’m having the everyone over to game tomorrow.  Can we swap the living room with the dining room?” We’ve done this before.  Our living room is much larger and when all the leaves are in the dining room table scooting […]

Goals: Making Them Real

About a week ago, I read a blog post by one of my writing pals, “Write Your Dreams into Existence.”  In her post, Renee talks about how to make your goals more real by journaling as if you’ve achieved them.  These are present realities, not pie-in-the-sky dreams for tomorrow. I have to admit that the […]

Rewriting: Cutting Excess Words

Whew.  That’s always a lot of work.  I’ve been rewriting which often comes down to making sure I have the strongest nouns and verbs so that I can keep my writing as tight as possible.  Of course, that involves cutting excess words. My own personal problem words?  “That” and “start.” “Start” is definitely a word […]

Library Con Live: Free One Day Virtual Event

If you are into graphic novels, science fiction, fantasy or other speculative fiction, consider registering for this free event.  As described by Library Journal and School Library Journal, “We’re excited to offer a day-long celebration of fandom-beloved stories and characters, from mind-bending speculative fiction to innovative comics and graphic novels. You’ll also learn from librarians and industry insiders […]

Inktober: Why This Writer Is Gearing Up for an Illustration Challenge

I would love to say that I have a good answer to that question.  Drawing fascinates me although I’m not expecially good at it.  But I’m also someone who holds fast to the idea that you need to do creative things that are hard. Why?  Because as a creative professional it is easy for me […]