This originally appeared on a great blog by Anne E. Johnson, JESTER HARLEY’S MANUSCRIPT PAGE, where she reveals her own writing as well as highlights several fiction authors in all genres! Check it out here: http://anneejohnson.blogspot.com/ When I do school visits, I often talk to students about “potato ideas.” These are ideas that are not [...]

I’m so thankful for libraries and librarians. And this week, it’s National Library Week! Since my book Finding My Place: One Girl’s Strength at Vicksburg has been published, I’ve been invited by librarians to speak at two different schools in St. Charles County this year–at Discovery Ridge Elementary School in Wentzville and All Saints School [...]

This originally appeared in my Sunday book column in The News-Gazette (http://www.news-gazette.com). I have left it in newspaper style. Author examines the language of U.S. leaders Sun, 03/17/2013 – 10:00am | Margo L. Dill With our 24/7 media world, as soon as the president of the United States utters a new word, phrase or saying, [...]

Teaching protagonist and antagonist and studying how the author created each one can help students understand story elements better and their own fiction writing. (If you are a writer, this can also help you!) When I do school visits about my writing process, I share with students information about my main protagonist, Anna Green (13-years-old), [...]

No one can write thank you notes like elementary students. Remember that show Bill Cosby hosted–Kids Say the Darndest Things? That’s what it’s like when an author receives thank you notes for a school visit or a letter about a book. It’s the greatest thing ever and always brings a smile to my face. I [...]

If you don’t live in the Midwest, you are probably tired of us Midwesterners complaining about the snow on Facebook and Twitter. But just look at my back yard on Sunday! (See my daughter–she’s trying to help my husband shovel the sidewalk. LOL) This is a scene from MARCH 24! I know, I know, March [...]

I am very excited to welcome Gloria Loring and her new book, Coincidence is God’s Way of Remaining Anonymous. Many of you will recognize Gloria for her fame and accomplishments–she starred for six years on Days of Our Lives as Liz Chandler. (Last night, I read a synopsis of Liz Chandler’s storyline on a soap [...]

I’m very excited to welcome Angela R. Lewis to my blog today to tell you about her book, The Game Changing Assist: Six Simple Ways to Choose Success. I met Angela when she asked me to edit her book, and I took her on as an Editor 911 client. Angela’s book is a positive teaching [...]

Continuing with my Wednesday 6 +1 traits of writing lessons to go with my book, Finding My Place, today I’m going to talk about a lesson in sentence fluency, using Finding My Place. One of the writing skills you teach with sentence fluency is having sentences of different lengths that start with different words when [...]

Yesterday when I posted on Facebook for WOW! and on my Editor 911 page about The Oscars, we got fewer responses than I figured we would, and many of them were negative. It turns out everyone doesn’t love this night as much as I do–I confess I like the Hollywood glam, I like to see [...]