I wanted to let you all know about a change I had to make to the website. I have, to date, received just shy of 200,000 spam messages on the site. This is because I have never required people to sign-up to comment. It has become too much to keep all the spam out so I have made the change to require a sign-up for comments. I hope you can understand why this is necessary.
Read moreAuthor: Michell
Is Theme Important in Writing?
Theme – What I Used to Think There was a time (early on in my writing) when I thought paying attention to theme was dumb. The story is the story. What is the point to adding unnecessary baggage? I would poo-poo people who talked about how important it was to identify the theme early in your stories. Again, if you had good characters and a good plot or plots, the rest would take care of itself, wouldn’t it? That was then, this is now As you might have already gathered, my opinion has changed regarding theme. I don’t know if that’s because I’ve become more mature in my writing or simply more aware, but I now believe theme is important. […]
Read moreSigning February 9th
I will be doing a signing at Indigo Signal Hill (Calgary) on February 9th at 10 AM. If you have been looking for my latest book or simply want to come talk about writing, that’s where you will find me. I hope to see you there.
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Going a bit off-track
Learning I’m going to write about something other than writing (sort of) today. I’m going to talk about learning. One of the most important lessons I learned early in my life is to never stop learning (yes, you will read the word “learning” a lot in this post. The challenge to continuous learning is (a) finding the time, (b) finding the money, (c) finding the information and (d) not overloading yourself. None of those challenges are show-stoppers; at the end of the day it really is up to you. So, what’s my point? Recently, a colleague of mine pointed me to a website called Udemy.com. They claim to have online courses on practically everything. I signed up for a couple […]
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