I had a very different subject that I wanted to write about today, but, alas, time has been my enemy as of late.  It’s funny how life can give you fodder for your writing, isn’t it? So with that, let’s talk about balance, specifically life-balance. Generally, life-balance can be broken down into two major categories:  Work and Home.  For those of us who don’t have the priviledge of working from home, work can approach and exceed 50% of our day.  Add sleep and the home portion of our day/night becomes pretty small. Just for the sake of my own personal writing challenges, I’m going to break out the home portion of my day, assuming a 10-hour work day (including commute).  […]

For those of you who pay attention to things like this, the very first post to Startingwritenow happened exactly one year ago tomorrow.  Truly a momentous occasion!  The world of writing has never been the same. I remember very well when Sean first mentioned his idea of the site to both myself and Aaron.  I remember being excited about the idea, but also a little worried.  What the heck could I possibly write about that would be interesting to other fledgling writers like myself?  Even more frightening, I had to do it every week. A daunting task, to say the least.  Especially since I had never done anything like it before. Still, I was intrigued by the concept for the […]

…and I am VERY glad!  Where to begin? For the curious among you, my first holiday destination was Cancun, Mexico.  It was just in time for hurricane season, I’m told, but we only saw rain twice and both times it was at night after we had shutdown for the evening.  Sweltering hot too, but in the end, very enjoyable. The trip to Mexico has proven to me that people can share the same system of measurement and still not really resemble each other in many ways.  Little things like speed limits, for example.  Suffice it to say that the Mexican way of life is substantially different than the Canadian one and we can leave it at that. The second portion of […]

Well, we made it… 4 episodes in 4 weeks.  This week, as you already know, we are talking about supporting characters and how your story resolution might go. So, without further ado, let’s soldier on. Part IIIe – Supporting Characters Supporting characters.  Whether you love them or hate them, they are (usually) a necessary facet of any story.  But what sorts of things do you need to consider when you’re creating them? For me, I try to keep them to a minimum.  What I mean by that is, I only bring in a supporting character if they move the story forward.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t have people in my stories.  Far from it.  I just don’t spend any time […]