Write What You Know

I learned a lot from Ernest Hemingway. One of his sage pieces of advice is: “Write what you know.” When I needed a location for my first mystery novel, The Myakka Murders, I chose Myakka River State Park. Why? Because I’ve spent hundreds of hours in...

Create a Bliss Station

Every creative person needs a Bliss Station, a special place where you do you work. Joseph Campbell wrote the following in The Power of Myth: “You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that...

Populating Your Novels

Be on the lookout for characters everywhere you go. Find inspiration for your main characters and your supporting cast using keen observation. Your characters will be a conglomerate of people you know, people you meet, and people you observe. The people in your...

Jack Kerouac’s 30 Cool Tips

Jack Kerouac was a writer and one of the pioneers of The Beat Generation, a lofty group of writers that included William S. Boroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. Kerouac was noted for his “Stream of Consciousness” approach to writing, where he wrote what...

Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing

Elmore Leonard was a prolific author who wrote many best selling novels including Punch Drunk, Get Shorty and Maximum Bob, some of which were made into movies. I enjoyed many of Elmore’s novels. He came up with Ten Rules of Writing, which I follow. I’d...