With summer officially here, there is no time like the present to pick up your pen and paper, find a warm, relaxing spot, and start working on that bestseller...right?

Anyone that understands writing knows that it is a craft; good writing doesn’t develop overnight. The goal here is to be the best writer you can be. Here are some freewriting exercises to help you loosen up and get the creative juices flowing.

Freewriting Exercise One
Objective: To get started with freewriting

Go into your kitchen and select an object strictly on impulse: a spoon, a can-opener, a microwave oven, a blender, a clock, a wall plaque, a napkin ring. It does not matter what you choose, but choose something quickly. Examine it very carefully by looking at it, touching it, and, if feasible, listening to it. Now get back to the workout room and write whatever you wish, for as long as you de4sire. The only requirement is that you give at least some kind of reference to the chosen item. If you choose a spoon, for example, you might freewrite about your grandmother’s spoon collection, your theories on the invention of the spoon, the way spoons look and feel, the material used in spoons, your child’s first spoon, your souvenir spoon from Stockholm…anything goes.

Freewriting Exercise Two
Objective: To get started with freewriting

Remember the nursery rhymes you learned as a child? Hey Diddle Diddle…Three Men in a Tub…Baa Baa Black Sheep? They really didn’t make a whole lot of sense then or now but they were fun to say out loud. Think of the nursery rhymes, songs, poems, and stories of your youth, then write them down. Quickly. Don’t worry if they bump into each other and get all tangled up. If the black sheep ends up in the tub in Mary Contrary’s garden while Robinson Crusoe and Jack and Jill search for the Wizard of Oz in Neverland, so much the better. Keep going in this way as long as you can, splicing rhymes, lyrics and riddles.

You may have some fun patching together a lot of silly images and nonsense, but this exercise does have a legitimate purpose: You’ll do a little harmless exploring with words and meaning, taking risks as you combine elements you would never otherwise try to combine. Much of novel writing involves seeking interesting combinations of ideas. This includes breathing a little new life into Dead-on-Arrival clichés.

Freewriting Exercise Three
Objective: To get started with freewriting.

Freewriting may or may not tell a story, but in most cases freewriting concentrates on descriptions. Let’s see what happens if you try to freewrite an event.

The following is an old grade-school exercise for writing a story, but it is an effective way to get the creative juices flowing. Choose a magazine and stop at the first picture you find particularly interesting or colorful, then write a paragraph or so about it. Afterward, see if t here’s a story you can tell about the figures or the setting in the picture. Does the picture show children washing a dog? Is it their dog? What would happen if the dog ran away? Is the picture of a man and woman kissing? Are they married to each other…or are their spouses in the next room, innocently watching TV? What would happen if the electric power went out?

Whatever story comes to your mind about the picture you’ve chosen, write it down. For that matter, write down as many story possibilities as you can think of. Do not worry about grammar or whether the ideas make sense. The goal is not “picture perfect” writing, rather that you have fun playing with the words and the meanings of those words.

All of these exercises can be found in Writing Aerobics I by Sterling and Davidson.

For more helpful tips and exercises, visit www.sterlinghouse-bookstore.com and check out:
Writing Aerobics I by C. Sterling and M. Davidson

Agree? Disagree? Tell us at editor@writersnewsweekly.com or join the discussion on facebook.com.

Photo courtesy: Kevin Rosseel

By Lindley Homol

The publishing industry may be the newest follower in the trend to go green. According to workshops presented at the recent Book Expo America in Los Angeles, there are a number of ways that the industry can limit its damage to the environment. One of the most popular methods presented at the conference, a solution championed by many of the major publishing companies, entailed printing on biodegradable or recyclable paper. As a result, this solution would reduce the amount of waste involved in the publishing process. According to BusinessWeek, publishers advocating this method are attempting to raise their recycled paper usage to thirty percent, a move that would save a billion tons of greenhouse gases. A second option involves printing fewer books, thus reducing the amount of paper products used altogether.

Although both ideas seem like elementary solutions to an ongoing environmental problem, the repercussions associated with these changes may be widespread. The switch to biodegradable paper can adversely affect the aesthetic value of books, since rapidly yellowing pages are an unintended side effect of this particular attempt to go green. Readers concerned with the visual appeal of their favorite works may choose not to buy books printed on recycled paper, thus contributing to the trend of declining book sales. A decision to print fewer books could have effects that are even more wide ranging. Publishers choosing to print fewer books may rely more on e-books and their reading devices, such as Amazon’s Kindle. A reliance on the few companies who produce these e-book readers inspires fear of a monopoly that would result in many lost jobs in traditional publishing companies. An increased use of e-books, however, could possibly help sales in the book industry. This specific green solution aims to offer an unparalleled selection of works, including hard-to-find titles and multiple languages, at consumers’ fingertips in under a minute.

The manufacture of just one book produces 8.85 pounds of carbon emissions, compared to the 1,290 pounds produced with each Apple laptop, according to BusinessWeek. Those individuals against the green initiative may wonder if environmentally-friendly measures will even have a long-term effect when compared to the pollution caused by other industries. For others, however, every little bit done to reduce waste counts. To these parties, being able to eliminate the pollution caused by book production by resorting to e-books could seem very tempting. Whether or not the publishing industry decides to go green, and to what extent it chooses to do so, the effects will be manifold on not only the industry, but also booklovers and the environment alike.

Agree? Disagree? Tell us at editor@writersnewsweekly.com or join the discussion on facebook.com.

By Carole Shmurak

Josephine Tey, along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh, was one of the grandes dames of the Golden Age of British Mystery. The Daughter of Time is considered her greatest masterpiece by some critics, while others have deemed it highly overrated.

Written in 1951, this is the fifth book that Tey wrote about Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Alan Grant. No ordinary policeman, Grant is the darling of maitre d’s and sophisticated theatre people. In the hospital with a broken leg, he grows bored with reading and staring at the ceiling, until actress and friend, Marta Hallard, brings him a pile of portraits with which to amuse himself. Grant, who is an expert at reading faces, becomes obsessed with one portrait, which turns out to be that of Richard the Third, the villain of the Shakespeare play, supposedly responsible for the murder of his two nephews. Grant is sure that the face cannot belong to a man capable of such evil, and, with an American graduate student to do his legwork, he sets out to find who really murdered the two young princes five hundred years earlier.

There is a great deal of conversation, most of it witty, and an almost total lack of action in this book. For the contemporary American reader, there is also the daunting challenge of following the events of the War of the Roses that Tey assumed her British readers would have learned in school; keeping all the Edwards and Henrys straight is no easy task, despite the family trees included in the book.

Many question the accuracy of Tey’s history, but members of the Richard the Third Society, with chapters in both Great Britain and the United States, applaud her work in redeeming Richard’s good name. The Daughter of Time has so much charm, with its perceptive observations of the tedium of hospital life and its vivid (and funny) characterizations of even the most minor characters, that it hardly matters to the reader whether the book is historically accurate. My experience with mystery groups is that readers either love this book or find it unbearably tedious. (And while people say they enjoy Christie and Sayers, “love” is the word that I hear most often about Tey.) I count myself among those who love it.

Janet Evanovich

Janet Evanovich is the author of a series of The New York Times bestselling mysteries featuring Stephanie Plum.

Q: Amidst all those rejection letters, what advice do you have for new writers waiting for that first sale?

A: “Move on to a new book. Always keep writing. Don’t wait around to sell something.”

Q: You have said, “I wouldn't go so far as to say Stephanie is an autobiographical character, but I will admit to knowing where she lives.” How does this connection help develop a fictional character?

A: “Putting a part of myself into Stephanie was a way of keeping her reactions honest. Because she’s part of a series it, helps to maintain a consistent personality.”

Q: What is the most difficult part of writing a series with the same main character?

A “For me, the difficult part is the relationship between my heroine and the two men in her life. I love the adventure of the romantic chase but I don’t want to turn this into a romance/family saga.”

Q: What can authors learn from your expansive interactive website?

A: “The website is an invaluable way to inform the consumer that a new product (book!) is available. And it is fun.”

Q: How does a writer successfully accomplish moving between genres without letting down their fans?

A: “In my case, I took what I loved about romance and squashed it into a mystery format. By doing this, I had something for everyone.”

Carlotta Holton is the author of Salem Pact and Touching The Dead, and is a member of the National Federation of Press Women and an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association.

Carlotta Holton has just received her second award for Touching the Dead from the National Federation of Press Women Communications Contest. Click here to purchase the book.

Crissa Constantine, author of the novel Broken Doll, holds master's degrees in Music and in Education. She was awarded a grant to start a music program at a school in California, and has released two CDs of her own piano compositions. She currently lives in British Columbia, Canada.

Don’t even start by saying that you are not scared of the dark. The old saying, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall,” rings true. It’s not just the children who moan and cry for their parents to leave a light burning in their room at bedtime; it’s the big, burly man who pulls his covers up over his head so nothing will get him. Everyone knows that once all the lights go out at night, bizarre and evil creature, of all types roam up and down our hallways.

We have all heard the creaky groans of an old wooden floor or rickety staircase pierce the silence of the night air. Our imagination always runs wild and wide open, expecting the worst to happen. We envision horrible and grotesque demons in our minds, creeping slowly toward our bedroom door. The murky shadows of the night camouflage their distorted outlines and scaly skins.

Disfigured heads, with bulging, bug-like eyes appear in the hall and peer through the crack in the door, just to have a glimpse at us while we sleep. Why is it coming for me? Does having my light on really keep them at bay? Would any respectable demon actually run and hide just because your Disney World lamp with the Mickey Mouse and Goofy figures is burning with multiple, one hundred-watt bulbs?

I don’t think it really matters if you sleep with your lights on or off. If something is out there and it wants in bad enough, it will make it to your doorstep. But once you close your eyes and go to sleep, your bright light will only help the dastardly beast illuminate his way through your house and into your personal nightmare. In fact, the light could serve as a beckoning beacon, encouraging any demon to come and see just who is afraid of the dark.

I dare you to leave the light on tonight and see what kind of creature ventures into your room. It very well could be the beginning of your next horror tale.

Brian Douglas Coyle, a graduate of Kent State University in Ohio, has over 30 years of experience in the banking industry. He is currently the Community Development Investment Manager at BB&T, the eleventh largest bank in the country. Brian is the author of Soul Riders and the 2008 release The Devil’s Sanctuary.

When I wrote my first book, Full Circle: The Near-Death Experience and Beyond (Pocket, Simon and Schuster, 1990) all I did was tell my truth. I wrote about how the synchronicities (or meaningful coincidences) became a web that wove my path in the direction I chose to take.

Bear with me while I sort through some back up material. The first section of Full Circle is called "The End." It is my life until my divorce, when I was 41. I had my near death experience (NDE) when I was 32. It was then that I made profound changes in my life. I went to school and became a respiratory therapist. My new career included being published in magazines and journals about the emotional needs of critical care patients. I became confidant, and my self-esteem became healthy. My husband of 23 years was upset and unsupportive, which led to the eventual demise of our marriage. I met Kenneth Ring, a University of Connecticut professor, and became a subject in his groundbreaking book on the NDE, titled Heading Toward Omega: In
Search of the Meaning of the Near-Death Experience.

My husband and I separated. My ex-husband, our mutual, friends and even my relatives told me I was crazy. They said I needed to settle down and go back to being the way I was before. In the first half of Full Circle, all of this is described.

I was alone one Sunday morning, and I wrote this poem:

The Beginning
I sit patiently, now
In my solitude.
Awaiting the dawn
Of my release
Knowing a death has
Occurred.
Two cautious still
To announce my rebirth.
But starting to sense my need
For lessons in crawling, then walking.
So I may eventually Skip
And Dance
And Live
To my Heart’s Own Content.

After I finished the poem, a couple of friends invited me to lunch. They knew I was having a hard time.

This is when my life got stranger. As described in Full Circle:

"In my car, I was waiting at a stop sign about to make a left turn when I saw a small car stop at the intersection across the street. There was a small box sitting on the top of the car. I honked my horn, trying to get the driver's attention. She ignored me, so I pulled out into the intersection, stopped, and got out. I could see the car was filled in the back with gift boxes. As I walked toward the car, the driver pulled off, turning sharply, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the street. The box on the roof was airborne, and as the car speeded past, the box hit me in the chest and then fell to the pavement. I picked it up with the contents spilling out and waved to the car, but the driver was long gone.

The box was in one hand and in the other I was holding a frilly white garment. It was trimmed in beautiful eyelet lace and satin ribbon. It was a baby's christening gown and bonnet. I chuckled and wondered if it was really intended for me. I knew I was dying; maybe the Universe was also telling me to stop being fearful; after death, you're born again! I got back in my car."

Later on this August day, I called Leslee,a friend from Connecticut who is from the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS.) I told her about the christening gown, and she told me she had just gotten off the phone with her sister who was crying. They wanted to christen their baby and didn't have the money. I mailed the gown and bonnet the next day to her and her baby.

In October, I drove 1700 miles to Connecticut for an IANDS Board meeting. During lunch, only a mile or two away from a church, was the christening for the baby I mailed the christening gown to. The parents lived over an hour away, but this church agreed to christen the baby for little money. Their decision for the time and place of the christening had in no way been influenced on me being at a board meeting there in Connecticut. Leslee and I attended the christening. This meaningful coincidence, after the other meaningful coincidences, had moved into a realm that I had to acknowledge as a miracle.

A few years later, the above poem and the series of coincidences became the pivotal turning point of my first book. The second half of the book which, like the poem, I called, “The Beginning” became a stream of synchronicities that I draw on constantly for my writing.

If we have the eyes, or the heart, to see, our lives can become the greatest story of all.

Barbara Harris Whitfield is the author of five books and numerous articles on the near-death experience and natural spirituality. She is a near-death experiencer and respiratory and massage therapist. She spent six years at the University of Connecticut Medical School researching the psychological, emotional, and energetic after effects of spiritual awakenings and recently retired from teaching at Rutger’s Institute for Alcohol and Drug Studies. Barbara lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband, author and physician Charles Whitfield, MD. They share a private practice helping adults that were repeatedly traumatized as children. Barbara’s new book, The Natural Soul, will be coming out in 2009 with SterlingHouse Publisher. For more information go to http://www.cbwhit.com and http://www.barbarawhitfield.com

My life as an author began because of my deep passion for reading. I literally read words from the time I wake up in the morning (reading the Yankee box score in the New York Post) to the time I go to bed at night (reading a fiction novel or a non-fiction work on a subject that interests me.)

My love of reading was a gift from my mother, who is still reading just as much as she ever has. There are very few trips made to Mom and Dad’s house without a gander at the books she’s finished and is just waiting to share.

I was always nervous giving my mother a copy of my books to read because she is such a voracious reader. I was worried that she might see right through me. Thankfully, she has loved each of my efforts.
Yet each and every time I do a book signing or an appearance, I am asked about what I like to read. Students, book club members, other authors, and even the janitor on the way in wants to know whom I read.
I usually begin talking about Steinbeck, switch to John Irving, mention Stephen King’s The Stand and become particularly annoyed if someone mentions The DaVinci Code (I hated that book.)

Yet do you need to read to be a good writer? My answer is a shout-from-the-mountaintops “YES!” How can you craft a story if you never read one? How can you develop characters if you aren’t exposed to poorly developed ones? (See The DaVinci Code.)

I have not read every book ever written. As the discussion goes on, someone will eventually mention the greatest book ever written that has somehow slipped by me.

“Oh, you just have to read it!” the person will squeal.
I’ll certainly try. I’ll read as much as I can, every day, for the rest of my life. If you love the craft of writing, you just have to.

Cliff Fazzolari is a professional writer and prolific author. He is on the Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo PICU Parent Advisory Council. He currently resides in Blasdell, New York.