Over 11,000 writers, editors, and publishers turned out this year for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs' Conference, making it one of the biggest literary hootenannies for anyone with a passion for putting words on the page.

Sometimes it takes several drafts before you get the point of view that works for a particular story.

Clearly, De Luca is indebted to the poetics of prose (if not to poetry) since there are no fewer than 50 instances in which he uses similes and an almost equal number of metaphors. It's apparent, too, that the use of such poetic devices are a kind of mainstay of his art.

Sometimes the best way to develop a character is to bring the character on stage and let them start talking. The stage, when you're writing a novel, ...

For my last novel, The Threadbare Heart, I had the great good fortune to arrange a nationwide contest in conjunction with Keepsake Quilting, one of th...

If your characters are alive, odds are good that they will be having sex at some point -- or thinking about sex, or running from sex, or hoping for se...

Last night, I was invited to another Long Beach book club that had read The Threadbare Heart. There were TWO rum cakes there, and a giant bowl of the ...

It's one thing to borrow an emotion, or a belief from someone, for one's writing, but an actual physical trait? It feels a little bit like stealing.

I spent all morning writing a character summary to try to figure out what this one character -- my daughter -- really wants. What was I doing?

Over the weekend, I asked a writer friend to read a two-page summary of my new book. It turns out, I can't move forward unless I know, really know, what my character wants.