Think of it as the Doorway of No Return. The feeling must be that your lead character, once she passes through, cannot go home again until the major problem of the plot is solved.

In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity.

Structure is translation software for your imagination.

Every hour you spend writing is an hour you don't spend worrying about your writing.

Status, worry and comparison are ways to madness, not victory.

Superb historical romance, with a spiritual theme woven seamlessly throughout. I much enjoyed The Covered Deep and look forward to more from its author!

Write like you're in love. Edit like you're in charge.

A writing teacher once told me that the most successful movies and books were simple plots about complex characters. You should be able to articulate your concept in a couple of lines.

There's a perilous word fiction writers need to watch out for. The word is 'had.'

The semi-colon is a burp, a hiccup. It's a drunk staggering out of the saloon at 2 a.m., grabbing your lapels on the way and asking you to listen to one more story.

The thing I do at the beginning is a "voice journal," a free form doc that is the character speaking to me. I just work on it until I start to hear different from my own, or the other characters.

Do not get depressed because of your condition

When we become more self-aware of our needs, we become better-equipped to takecare of ourselves.

Women aren't mean the way that men are. They're full of life and they're like God in that way.

Fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.

Essentially, I'm untrained, so I just go with my imagination and try to put myself as solidly as I can into the shoes of whatever person I'm going to be playing.

If you have so much business to attend to that you have no time to pray, depend upon it that you have more business on hand than God ever intended you should have.

Only by fighting for democratic power do workers educate themselves up to the level of being able to wield that power.

Those that are above business.

I've learned a huge amount because I've been tested and, more importantly, I've been trusted.

I should have the courage of my lack of convictions.