Will Writer’s Digest Die?

Please, No!

By Annette Rey

F&W Media, the publisher of Writer’s Digest and more than fifty other magazines, announced Chapter 11 bankruptcy due to plummeting subscriptions and advertising revenue.

I invoke the little boy’s words as he looked up into the face of his hero, a beloved baseball player accused of throwing the 1919 World Series in the infamous Black Sox Scandal, “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”

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Motives for Your Characters

Finding Motive

By Annette Rey

So many things to incorporate in your characters, right? You can run dry inventing.

Here’s a real quick shortcut to help you to continue growing your characters in a believable way.

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Writing With Concision

Cut Your Babies

By Annette Rey

Many writers want to meet a word count and fear they won’t be able to reach that objective. So they spew. That’s not a totally bad thing. Their problems arise when they find they have over-extended and need to eliminate words for the sake of their word count. Their words are their babies. “But I like the way it sounds now!”

Word count be damned, put concision in position one. You will find that if you focus on concision, clarity follows.

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Baseballs, Beach Balls, and Sex

Look, Think, Write

By Annette Rey

Writer’s block? Okay, we’ve been over this before.

Step One: Look around your room.
Step Two: What do you see?
Step Three: Name it out loud.
Step Four: What thoughts are conjured by those words?
Step Five: Write about it.

It really is that simple.

Why? Because you are a creative writer, that’s why. Believe in yourself.

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A Word Writers Should Know

By Annette Rey

Amanuensis

The word amanuensis is pronounced very easily and exactly as it looks phonetically.

uh manu in sis

A writer should know this word because we’d all like to hire one to make our lives easier!

An amanuensis is a literary or artistic assistant who takes dictation and copies manuscripts.

How much fun that would be to have, right? I can only daydream about this – having someone else process my pile of work. I would train him to help me in the marketing process, too. I would also add to his workload researching submission markets for me.

That would provide me with a perfect day to spend entirely on my creative writing!

I’d like to just meet an amanuensis! Hmmm, I wonder what they charge.

This is another Wonderful Word for people like me and you – to hear its poetry of sound, its very soul. I admit, I look at words as personal friends. And that’s not a bad viewpoint because, as a writer, words serve me well.

Amanuensis – a beautiful word, indeed.