Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 220

The writing curve

Some scattered insights into the writing life ...
Disclaimer:  Today my take on the writing life will be different from yesterday's and from tomorrow's. Transitioning into being published is a shaky learning curve, I've found. I glean what I can from others' experiences, but it's a curve for the most part we seem to have to figure out for ourselves: up, down, slithering about, occasionally knocked sideways.    
First words: I love to write around a rough idea, and let the idea ha...

My Writing Life, or La Dolce Vita

“Now we’ve told you all about our writing journey, here are some insights into our writing life, and how we live it.”
- from Susan
Reading last week’s Minds authors makes it clear(er) to me that I’m not going to be anyone’s role model on how to construct a writing life. I have no brilliant insights, only a few basic tools I use to hack my way through the underbrush that tangles my writing life. 
Motivation is important. For me, there’s nothing quite as motivating as a contract for a book. I...

Respect The Fourth Wall

Process has never been my favorite subject. Since my beginnings as a comedian and actor, I've treated The Fourth Wall, that invisible and yet impenetrable barrier between performance and audience, as sacred.
"See, you sit over there. I stay up here. That's how the magic happens."
I remember late nights, at coffee shops, with a bunch of comedians all dissecting and rearranging each other's material after an open-mic at whatever workout rooms we'd crawl through. We'd openly lament the bits that w...

Hello, I’m Alan (Part II)

by Alan

I’ve always been a numbers guy. As a kid, I hated English class. All that grammar and junk. I didn’t like reading so-called classic novels (I did a lot of skimming). I certainly didn’t share my father’s love for literature (he was a former English teacher).

I went to college and studied Mechanical Engineering. I didn’t much like engineering, so I went back to business school and got an MBA (at MIT, not exactly a fertile breeding ground for creative writers!).

I didn’t much like busin...

Write on

by Dietrich Kalteis
Early every morning I switch on my computer, and fueled by coffee, I get into whatever story I’m working on, and I go until noon. Mornings are best for me, that’s when I’ve got more energy and focus. Working on my seventh novel now, I’ve got it down to a routine that works for me, and I’m even getting a little better at staying off social media while I’m supposed to be writing. Outside of my morning routine, I carry a notepad with me and jot down ideas that come to me durin...

A Window onto my Writing Life

By R.J. Harlick
In the previous blog, I gave you some insight into how I became a writer, this week I’ll open a window onto my writing life.
From the moment, I penned the first words for Death’s Golden Whisper, I knew I would have to set aside a time for writing and follow it, otherwise given my penchant for putting off today’s tasks until tomorrow, I would end up never finishing anything. I established mornings as my writing time and amazingly, to me at least, I followed it. Eight books later,...

A Window into my Writing Life

By R.J. Harlick
In the previous blog, I gave you some insight into how I became a writer, this week I’ll open a window into my writing life.
From the moment, I penned the first words for Death’s Golden Whisper, I knew I would have to set aside a time for writing and follow it, otherwise given my penchant for putting off today’s tasks until tomorrow, I would end up never finishing anything. I established mornings as my writing time and amazingly, to me at least, I followed it. Eight books later,...

Living the Writing Life

My writing life and how I live it.
People sometimes ask me how I manage to be so productive. Here are a few things that matter to me:
1)   Motivation. I am highly motivated. About ten years ago I realized that if I was really, really serious about wanting to be a published writer, I had to up my game. I was on the “write when I’m inspired” track, and that changed. Now I try to write every day. I don’t always succeed, but most of the time I do. On a 5-week trip to Africa, I took a mini...

The Wonder of Me ; )

It’s a New Year – and we Criminal Minds are taking the chance to (re)introduce ourselves. First up – how we’ve arrived where we are in our writing career.

by Paul D. Marks

My name is Paul and I’m a wordaholic. I write ’em. I read ’em. I horde ’em. I find secret hiding places for them. How the hell did I get in this fix?

I started young. At first I didn’t mainline. I just read a few words here and there, cat, dog, see Spot run. Then I began to string more and more words together, until I could re...

"Dozy Daisy Dreamboat" grows up

The garret I starved in.Miss Shaughnessy - my primary one teacher (and how's that for a name five-year-olds have to learn to spell?) - dubbed me "Dozy Daisy Dreamboat" because I spent more time looking out the window and making up stories than I did trying to . . . do whatever the rest of them were doing. I wouldn't know.

And she was right. My Godmother, Aunty Doreen, lived opposite the school and said she used to see me, chin in hands, leaning on the windowsill, totally oblivious  to eve...