Writing Advice

Once a month Harlequin American authors will post a snippet of writing advice. Many of our blog readers are aspiring writers and since all of us authors have experienced the ups and downs along the road to publication we thought we'd share what has helped us in our quest to be the best writers we can be. We hope you'll find these "snippets" helpful and we encourage you to share any "tips" you have with us.

Thanks to Laura Braford...here's May's writing tip-o-the-month!

While sitting with a writing buddy at lunch one day, I found myself making excuses for why I hadn’t written as much as I’d hoped since our previous get together (work, kids, housecleaning, laundry, etc.). She looked at me and said, “thirty minutes. That’s all.”

We batted her idea around for a few minutes and came up with a thirty minutes/thirty days writing plan. We figured that we could always find thirty minutes in any given day. And if that’s all we got…it was better than nothing.

We tried it, and it worked! Sure, there are some days thirty minutes is all I get. But more often than not those thirty minutes have a way of stretching into an hour, two hours, and sometimes even longer.

Of all the tips I’ve tried over the years, this has been—by far—the best thing I’ve done for my writing.

Laura Bradford
www.laurabradford.com