Anna Gates Ha2 minMorning Words and MagicIn the early morning, the summer air is magnanimously cool. I rise before anyone else is awake. I sit on my little cushion, close my...
Anna Gates Ha3 minLearning to Meditate, Learning to Write a NovelWhen I first picked up Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, I was in a pretty bad place. I’d been a mom for about three years, and...
Anna Gates Ha3 minYour Novel's Ground Situation: The Ultimate Plot TestWhen writers talk about plot, the conversation tends to center upon inciting incident, rising action, and climax. But a novel’s ground...
Anna Gates Ha4 minFor Emotion- and Character-Based Writers: How to Get to the Plot?For a very long time, when someone asked me what my novel was about, I became really anxious. It didn’t matter if I had two-hundred or...
Anna Gates Ha4 minCreating Emotion on the Page with OscillationLike so many other writers, I fell in love with reading at a young age. There were many things that drew me to words, including my love...
Anna Gates Ha2 minTo a Writer, Whose Baby Will Not SleepOh, mama. Things haven’t gone as you’ve planned, have they? It’s eleven o’clock at night, and your baby has been screaming for the last...
Anna Gates Ha3 minThe Power of Nonrestrictive Elements: An Emotional Guide to GrammarI am, unequivocally, a sentence girl. I love the craft, the swing, of words that builds to create narration. Most of my experience with...
Anna Gates Ha3 minUsing Fear as an Editing Tool From an evolutionary standpoint, fear is very useful. It was fear—increased heart rate, tense muscles—that allowed our ancestors to...
Anna Gates Ha4 minOn Presence & WritingAbout a year ago, standing near the cold cut display, I met a woman who said she’d been to infinity and knew the meaning of life. She’d...