Productivity Tip #7—KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING & EDITING Write during the writing stage. Edit during the editing stage. Even though both activities involve a writer sitting at the keyboard staring at the screen, Writing and Editing are two very different processes. Each one requires a separate set of skills and talents; each uses a different part of your brain—the creative part and the analytical part. Learn to recognize the difference, and teach yourself to focus on only one process at a time. Writing is the creative part of the process. When you’re writing—creating—let yourself be caught up in your...
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Writing Productivity Tip #5: Use Every Minute If you think you need large blocks of time to accomplish any writing, then you’re kidding yourself. One sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, one page at a time. Sure, we’d all love extended, uninterrupted hours to do nothing but sit and think, to write page after page while immersed in the story and characters without a distraction in the world … but that’s a luxury most of us don’t have. In the real world, the majority of writers—even successful, published writers—still have full-time jobs and need to fit in...
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Reposting a series of tips I published for last year’s NaNoWriMo— Writing Productivity Tip #3—WORK ON DIFFERENT PROJECTS AT THE SAME TIME This one works best for people with ADD, or low boredom thresholds!  (And it doesn’t work for everybody.) Each writing project has many phases: research, plotting, writing the first draft, doing the rough edit, polishing the final edit, copyediting, proofreading, and the marketing and business.  Since some of these tasks are more onerous than others, I keep several different projects on the creative burner at all times at different stages.  Personally, I love the creative explosion of plotting...
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Here's the first chapter in my new holiday story featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I., "Naughty & Nice."  If you enjoy it, you can read the whole story for only 99¢ 1 Santa Claus was an unnatural. That made perfect sense—I just hadn’t thought of it before. The jolly bearded guy in the bright-red suit came into the offices of Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations, desperate to hire my services. It’s not often, I suppose, that Santa requires a detective—particularly a zombie detective. “I need your help, Mr. Chambeaux,” Santa said. I extended my gray hand to shake his black-gloved one. “At...
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