Another favorite of mine from Stephen King.

Act fast! Are you in for a swim?

Josh's Pool Party

Happy Father's Day

Love This Article

Great Read

Consistent Voice

My Birthday and Rick Yancey

This year for my birthday I decided I truly wanted to see a man that I have immense respect for. There were many places I could have gone to see him and I decided Nashville was the place. We drove from Wright City, Mo. I know most people have no idea where that is so to give you some idea it is approximately 60 miles west of St. Louis, a mere 358 miles from Nashville AKA 5 hours and 12 minutes.

We drove and my experience with Illinois is this:  it is never ending. Beautiful but exits are far and few, not good when you are drinking lots of coffee. It is a divided highway with beautiful trees on the sides of it and in the median which many times were tempting.(It's okay I controlled myself!)

As a writer that’s book is not published yet (can’t call myself an author just yet), I love to go to listen to Authors even if they are not in the same genre that I write in. You learn so much. Usually I don’t ask questions I listen. (Signing stalker) But, this man is in the genre I love to read, write and review others.

This time for some unknown reason a force lifted my hand and made me speak when he asked whose birthday was the closest to the signing. Mine was the 2^nd signing was on the 4^th. Normally I would never, ever and I mean ever do something like this, yes I really mean I am the signing stalker.  I received a movie poster from his book turned movie. Thank you very much (squeals with excitement).

This man’s name is Rick Yancey, his final book is out for “The Fifth Wave,” it is “The Last Star.” The amount of information taken in was invaluable at his signing. He graciously answered all the questions asked by his young audience, talked and told stories. For the members of his audience that were interested in writing he showed only encouragement with a lot of enthusiasm.

This man is a genius, gracious and entertaining.  If you haven’t read any of his books what on earth could you be waiting for? As they say “Do it, do it now!”

See what you are missing here: Books by Rick Yancey

~Debbie Browdy~

Internal Editor by - Natasa & the team at NY Book Editors

I know they wrote this article about me! I highly recommend you sign up for there "Writers Bootcamp Lessons" New York Book Editors Hi Friend,   Do you have a little voice in your head that says: Wait a minute, that doesn’t sound right. Is that a run-on sentence? There has to be a better way of saying that. Thesaurus.com? Your fifth grade grammar teacher would be so proud of you. Not! Are you seriously going to ignore the squiggly line under the misspelled word?! No one will understand this sentence. Reword it. NOW! That little voice is called your internal editor, and it’s not just a terrible nag -- it’s also a destructive force that can throttle your creativity. What’s worse: giving in to your internal editor and correcting a sentence or conflict here or there only emboldens that internal editor. The soft nag becomes a forceful command that will not be ignored. You’ve heard “don’t feed the animals.” Now, I’m telling you “don’t feed the internal editor.” Well, at least not during your first draft. The truth is, the internal editor provides an important job during the editing process. However, it is unwelcome in the creative process. During the creative stage, you should allow yourself the freedom to brain dump. This is what’s called “writing the whole.” Instead of creating a lean draft and then inserting content afterwards, you should create a “fat” draft initially and then take away the unneeded content during the editing process. But in order to do that, you must turn off the nitpicky part of your brain that’s constantly trying to edit and create the “perfect” story. That sounds admirable, but the problem is, you won’t know what the perfect story is until afteryou’ve written it. By tweaking it here or there, you could be left with disparate, disjointed content. Instead of working on the next great American novel, you’re piecing together a literary Frankenstein. *cue thunder clap* The internal editor needs something else to do during the creative process. Here are a few ways to shut off your internal editor, or at least distract it until you’re ready for editing: Unconventional Advice Type with the screen black. If you’re working on a computer, turn the screen brightness all the way down. It will definitely feel weird at first, but it’s extremely freeing once you get the hang of it. This way, with the internal editor in the dark, you won’t have the irresistible urge to re-write that sentence or passage until you’re in editing mode mostly because you can’t see it to correct it. When you type this way, brace yourself: you will have typos. You’ll probably even feel yourself making those typos as they happen. Instead of correcting it (which is pretty impossible in the dark), just take a space and then type the word again, this time correctly, and carry on. Remember, you can fix all of these errors at the end of your writing session when the ideas are no longer flowing. Dictate your words. Similar to typing in the dark, you can also speak instead of write. This method eliminates the itch to correct yourself until the editing process. Why? Because you literally cannot “see” your words until they’ve been converted into text. Dictation is quick, easy, and in most cases, free. If you have a smartphone, you probably have a built-in recording app. If not, you can easily download one for free like Voice Recorder(Apple) or Audio Recorder (Android). The next step is just to speak. You’ll be amazed at how many more words you can “write” by speaking instead of typing. This strategy speeds up the creative process and quiets the internal editor. Two for one! Distract your internal editor. For some writers, it’s difficult to write in complete silence. Having the radio or television turned on at a low but decipherable volume in the background can give your internal editor something else to focus on while you get some work done. Give yourself a word limit. The internal editor becomes less vocal when you force yourself to write to a certain word threshold within a specific amount of time, for example 1000 words in one hour. If you tell yourself, I’ve got to get this amount of words written in this specific time frame, you’ll find that the internal editor becomes more of an ally than a foe. Negotiate with your internal editor. If your internal editor has a strong personality, you may find that it’s better to negotiate. For example, promise yourself to edit your draft at the end of each writing session. But be sure to keep your promise because you can’t fool yourself. I hope everyone finds this as helpful as I did. Debbie Browdy