First Word

Every time you shift and change your life, you create what I call the new normal. I feel really fantastic today. I am in the middle of my new normal. I'm adjusting to my life as a single parent. My kids are here. My eldest climbed in my spare walk-in closet and organized all of the boxes. We have a new bed being delivered today for him to sleep on, which completes the office/spare bedroom. Why does this matter? It's really about finally settling in and accepting and adjusting to my life as it is. I have so much to look forward to at this point, too. California Girl Chronicles script polish wrapped up yesterday (pretty much), and this process coming to an end with an important step forward. The script is why I'm here. I am moving it forward with my producer to pitch to TV executives. The experience of working with someone of his experience and caliber has been rewarding. He's teaching me a lot even if he doesn't know it yet. I've been watching with a keen eye ...

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'...

Most authors are surprised to find out the hardest part of the publishing process is not writing the book. Want to know the hardest part? It's the final proofing. Getting a book completely cleaned up and error-free is no small job. In my opinion, it is absolutely the hardest part of the job. What people generally don't understand is that there are several editorial roles on most publications. Authors generally have no idea the differences in those roles -- and the proofer has the hardest job of all. To help you understand the editing process, here are the roles you commonly see (and if you look on magazine mastheads you'll see these roles broken down): Editor in Chief -- this person decides the broad content and takes a more global role on the publication. He or she manages the scope and reach of the publication. When you see the specific stories in the publication, the editor in chief probably didn't decide on the specific stories as much as he/she approved and watc...