by Bethany Jett, @BetJett Welcome back to Part Two of our series 11 Ways to Create a Sense of Place. If you missed the opener to this series where we mentioned 1. Food, 2. Dialect, and 3. Conducting Research, be sure to check out Part One here. We’ll continue our eleven…

by Edie Melson @EdieMelson But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control… Galatians 5:22-23 For me, this verse is tough. Some of the things listed are easy. Some…well…not so much. In my travels this fall, I’ve had the opportunity to hear about other the…

by Bethany Jett, @BetJett I'd planned on posting Part 2 in the series of 11 Ways to Create a Sense of Place. However, on my drive home from a meeting tonight, all the similarities between writers and politicians flooded through my mind. It's amazing what goes through my brain when there…

by Bethany Jett, @BetJett I host a weekly online show called Writers Chat and yesterday's topic was how to create setting in our stories. The tips were so great I had to share with our Blue Ridge community. Creating great scenes is not only for fiction writers. Whether you're writing…

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Story ideas can be like fireworks. They soar and explode in beautiful colors…then their dance fizzles to the ground and we turn our attention to the next one. But story ideas don’t have to fade away. A writer can take those wild moments of inspiration and…

by Bethany Jett, @BetJett I'm obsessed with reading lately. It comes in spurts and dry spells, but this last week especially, I've inhaled one after another. As Stephen King says, to be a good writer, you have to do two things: read a lot and write a lot. Ergo, reading…