First Word

My curly-haired sweetheart just wandered in my office at 6:00 a.m. I was surprised she was up at the crack of dawn. What little kid wants to see the sunrise? Most kids -- and most especially -- teenagers don't crawl out of bed this early. Ah, remember the good ole pre-insomnia days when you could party till midnight and sleep till noon? When I was in college, I timed all my classes around the ability to sleep in and watch Days of Our Lives LOL. Years later, I would end up with a client whose husband was on the show, interview one of the actors for a story, and then meet Deidre Hall who plays Marlena. The strange world I live in. I always have this weird disconnect from the reality of the entertainment business and watching my favorite shows. I also have another weird disconnect, which has always been true, from the books and articles I write and the readers being touched. Writing itself is this internal, personal experience. So when it goes out into the world, and I get the read...

Bogged down in exposition : so many writers will spend so much time setting the stage for the drama to take place that they lose the reader in the sheer volume of the details. Many readers will, in fact, check out of the story long before the aforementioned drama even has a chance to occur. Too much exposition is like sludge to the storytelling process and should be avoided. You can easily and effectively set the stage and then just let the drama unfold. Too much minutia : as a reader, I really get distracted and often discouraged by writers who fall in love with the minutia. Whether it's a novel or screenplay, you should only include descriptions of things that move stories forward. In screenplays, you should absolutely only mention that which is relevant to the story, period. You should not add unnecessary elements that don't matter. It's distracting and irrelevant to the actual story. Just ask yourself, "How does this push the story forward?" If it doesn'...

Whenever I hear other writers (who still have day jobs) complain they don't have enough time to write their novel or non-fiction book, I will eagerly try to explain how they can get it done. Most of the time, though, if they already have mental barriers to what I'm saying, they don't listen. Instead, they'll give me a worthwhile list of all the reasons why they don't have time. So, I'm going to debunk your excuses here really fast. First, you should never attempt to give me your litany of reasons why you can't get something done -- ever! Why? Wait till you hear what I manage to get done and how. So to make your jaws collectively drop, here is what I'm working on: three books (each are in the writing stage too, which is the one that I'm most actively involved in), one children's book that is almost ready for production, blogs (two for me and one for my client), newsletters (one for me that is weekly and two for clients), another book that is almos...

In my coaching class, Erica has you pick a superhero. Mine is "Enthusiastic Elektra," and let me just say that my enthusiasm runneth over today. First, I am so jazzed. I'm "Elektra-fied" jazzed. I've been working on a script project for a few months now, and we're putting finishing touches on it. Before we even finished up the final revision, my client pitched to a big name producer (who I will not reveal quite yet), and he was cracking up and offered to help shepherd it through. Who you know in this business is 9/10th of the battle. So, the producer's help to either possibly acquire the script or help introduce us to an agent is HUGE. I'm so on top of the enthusiasm world right now. And my new novel California Girl Chronicles is moving along swimmingly. I'm on chapter 3, and I can't wait to introduce readers to the quirky world of Brea Harper, hopeless romantic and hapless but also smart and driven. It will be in the tone of the Sookie ...