Laura Ellen’s Top Ten Blog Posts

#6: How I Became a Writer I was very jealous at age three. I didn’t understand why my sister got to go to kindergarten every morning and bring all these exotic looking papers and books home, and I couldn’t. I took to eavesdropping and spying on her while she did her homework – especially when… Read more »

Laura Ellen’s Top Ten Blog Posts

#8: The Scary Art of Query Writing Let’s face it, query writing can be scary. Most of us would much rather begin writing a new novel than boil down the one we just finished into a short, concise pitch. But if the rest of the world is to read that finished novel, you’ll have to… Read more »

Laura Ellen’s Top Ten Blog Posts

#9: Writing In the Dark: A Few Technical Tips Our theme on the Sleuths, Spies, Alibis blog for October was Writing in the Dark. I decided for my post to get a little technical on how to make your mystery, well, dark. Here it is: While you need a good plot and great characters with… Read more »

What’s Been Stopping You From Writing?

Every time I send an email out to someone lately, I cringe at my perky little “Check out my blog!” note that automatically attaches to the end of each email. I have even erased it several times to avoid being seen by the recipient because I know if they actually DO check out my blog,… Read more »

Newberry According to My 10 year old

>My 10 year old son was reading The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin in his Lit Circle at school. As it is one of those books that I hear about all the time, have been meaning to read, but have never actually read (yes, I know, even after getting my MA in Children’s Lit I… Read more »

Deciding What To Write — Revisited

>Okay, so after my last post I was all gung-ho. I was going to stay with what I was writing, see it through to the end, stick with what I was passionate about, what I was hearing in my heart. And I did – I wrote two more chapters and was really getting back into… Read more »

Deciding what to write

>Over the past few weeks I have been a bit stuck. It isn’t writer’s block exactly because I have several things I could be writing. My problem is which one I should be writing. I had been revising a novel that I am passionate about – in love with the plot, the characters, the new… Read more »

Writers and Imaginations

>As a writer, I find possible plot ideas in everything from crazy dreams to news articles to childhood memories to things that occur in my own children’s lives. It may be a a really cool setting I stumble upon while traveling or some oddball character I run into, even a song on the radio –… Read more »