Wise words.

Therese Patrick

Romance writers are generous and loving and kind. Don't believe me? Listen to these wonderful words by Therese Patrick to me, when I was despairing that I couldn't write for 8 hours at a time.

Write for 8 hours on end? Good grief! 4 - tops. I'm not into turning my mind and body over to a muse for half of my consciousness each day. Writers need to be living life in order to write about it. 8 hours of butt in chair every day is not living life, it's avoiding the stories that are developing and evolving all around us.

Stories come from people. 4 hours of being out in the world where people are walking and talking - then 4 hours of butt in chair... Or 4 hours of reading followed by 4 hours of writing.

You can't write about life if you are not living life or reading about life. Find your own personal balance then celebrate that! The words will live there.

Learn more about Therese over at her great blog, Author Marketing 101. 

Co-founder of  Author Marketing 101 with C. Morgan Kennedy.  AM101 is FREE marketing advice and actionable tips for authors. We present workshops and our AM101 Guide & Journal will be published in the fall of 2013!  Our 7 Primary Points can be applied to Artists and Small Business owners who are looking to stand out from the crowd in the internet cloud.  Change the words that apply to authors and books to your title and product and have fun online.

Blast from the Past.

Note: I am currently at the Romance Writers of America National Conference. While I'm gone, I'm reposting some of my older blog entries. This one is about how writers figure out their characters.




Every writer finds ways to make her characters three-dimensional and interesting. We fill out character sheets, brainstorm via longhand in cheap (or expensive, depending on your personality) notebooks, post pictures of what we think they look like - the list goes on and on.

Archetypes or stock characters are fantastic starting places. Often people get quite upset about these ideas, claiming that using them leads to one-dimensional characters or stereotyping. In the hands of a writer who isn't paying attention, yes. That can happen. I really like the way Christopher Vogler puts it in The Writer's Journey:

Looking at the archetypes....as flexible character functions rather than rigid character types, can liberate your storytelling. It explains how a character in a story can manifest the qualities of more than one archetype.

Every good story reflects the total human story, the universal human condition of being born into the world, growing, learning, struggling to become an individual, and dying. Stories can be read as metaphors for the general human situation, with characters who embody universal...qualities, comprehensible to the group as well as the individual. (pgs. 30-33)

Here are just a few archetype systems that writers I know use.

Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell's breakdowns which includes categories such as Hero, Mentor, Threshold Guardian, Herald, Shapeshifter, Shadow, and Trickster.

Visconti-Sforza Tarot.

The Tarot- Which has the advantage of very pretty art in addition to helping figure out character traits.

Astrological signs (a perennial favorite)


Gods and Goddesses of various pantheons (I have a weakness for the Greeks, but I've found inspiration in other religions, too)






I'll be getting into these ideas into great depth in later posts. Let me know if you want me to go into the whole Jung/Joseph Campbell origins of modern thought on archetypes. It's fascinating and I love it, but I can be long winded about it.