Rachel Lee's Blog

Well... writing is all about what we know, right?  Or so I was always told.  And it's true that we reach into our personal experiences in life to create characters and stories that will feel real and resonate with readers.

But writing has a few lessons of its own to teach.  The most important may be that the bigger the challenge, the bigger the opportunity.

Writing a story should never be "easy."  If it's easy, something is wrong.  The characters have to face challenges and get into extremely difficult situations.  As I have learned, when I box in my characters in to the point where I want to

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One of the questions most frequently asked of an author is: Where do you get your ideas?  And the answer is invariably: they're everywhere.  From the back of the mind, from news items, from the world around us.

Just as invariably, that answer proves to be disappointing.

But there's actually no magic to story-telling.  Psychologists have come to recognize that story-telling is how we create our own lives.  It's the way we put information together into a narrative that makes sense to us.  Everything that happens around us is being woven into the story.

How so?  Well, try to pay attention to how

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