By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills If you’re like me, writing can be a war zone. Every day I march to my computer and battle with words. Sometime I carry the flag and stand on my desk and scream victory. And other times I hide under my desk and cower like a…

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Dear writer, do you pray for or prey on your readers? Pray and prey are homophones. These are words that sound alike but have different meanings and different spellings. But this isn’t about grammar until we consider pray and prey are verbs. So how do these…

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Finding the perfect literary agent can be a daunting task. With so many writers looking for representation and so many agents looking for the next bestselling novel, where does a writer begin? But the task isn’t impossible. With a few guidelines, a writer can navigate onto…

By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Reminders about our craft burst our imaginations into creative mode. From A to Z, we find sources of inspiration to keep us writing. I’ve chosen the first word that entered my mind as a means to keep my imagination in full gear. [tweet_box design="default" float="none" inject="#writingtip…

by DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Writers seldom become successful and create a marketable book—overnight. At least that wasn’t my experience. Highways, speed bumps, and traffic lights are a part of the writing life. The victories and triumphs are waylaid with rejection slips, disappointments, and lots of rewrites. But when the first…

by DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Varying degrees of point of view (POV) allows the writer to establish emotional distance between the reader and the character. The distance is set in direct relationship to the role the character plays in the story, the mood, and voice.  The POV character takes the spotlight…