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Last week, we were discussing openings in the blog and newsletter, and long-term BWW member Melanie Lee wrote this as a response. It was a thoughtful and important response that deserved its own spot in the blog-line. Post your own response in the comments below: Do first lines matter to you? What do you look […]

Elmore Leonard’s tenth rule of writing is: “Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” Excellent advice for standing out in a slush pile or on crowded shelves. But of course, readers are not uniform and so in the end we do well to write for ourselves, toward what we love. Or

BWW’s own Judith Nasse reports from the Taos Writer’s Conference: “Wally Lamb told a great story, pertinent to all of us who are submitting to magazines. He said when he was first starting out he submitted stories to umpteen magazines. One story got a rejection letter from “Mississippi Review.” A bit later, without realizing he’d

“I just want to write this summer,” we say. And then summer is upon us, with swim lessons, sudden emergencies, that exercise regime we also meant to implement, the family or friends who visit so seldom we can’t help but turn days over to them, or weeks. Work piles up. The days are long and

We had a glorious day last Saturday, BWW Inspiration Day, sitting peacefully on the deck of our retreat, gazing at the garden, vineyards and the mountains beyond, from the the shade of a lone redwood tree that towered over the little house. We began with the rules for writing–examining several sets, as I wrote about

1)   Risk. Yes, we talk about risk when we talk about getting started, but you have to keep risking as you go deeper. You have to risk more than you thought you had to give. You have to risk seeing what works and what doesn’t work. You have to risk rethinking what you’ve done and

1) Poetry. If you got in this for language, a love pure and passionate for the magic of creating images and capturing ideas in words, there is nothing like poetry to stimulate the senses and start the flow. Other sources of language to trip the language fantastic include: reading down the margin of a book,

This week, as we wind up the spring quarter in the BWW and head into our amazing summer courses, we are having a submission action meeting right before our term party. One of our fabulous students, writer Leslie Rodd, has had a great deal of success submitting her work to literary magazines and contests, leading

Last week, I told you that I was cutting my 103,000 word novel down to 60,000 words, at my agent’s request. Well–it’s at 54,000 words now. And I LOVED this editing process. I loved cutting scenes that were not an integral part of the main story. I loved cutting adjectives that did not pull enough

Just so we are all on the same page, the Fool of the Tarot deck is the hero of The Hero’s Journey. This is no coincidence. It occurs to me that most of my blog posts are about the same thing from a slightly different metaphoric angle.  In fact, any old metaphor will do.  I