December 21, 2012By Mary Hutchings ReedIf you’re a lawyer, you’ve honed the skill of interviewing clients and deposing witnesses. You know how to ask the same question a dozen different ways to clarify an answer, and you know how to ask a leading question, even if the objection will be sustained. But do...Read More

  The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin’s first page had this picture of me (in pink) moderating the CBA’s Alliance for Women’s Author’s panel in November.    Read More

      Write what you know,” is one of the most common pieces of advice given to new writers, but not one that should be taken too literally, at least not in a factual sense. I don’t know a lot more than I do know, and if in order to write a novel I...Read More

IOctober 19, 2012 f you’ve been with us since April and been diligent about your writing on a daily basis, there is a good chance that you have at least 80 pages by now. Isn’t that remarkable? Yes, it is! You may deserve a break today, but I’m here to caution you not to take...Read More

Have a new date for the publication of “Warming Up” by She Writes Press, now set for March 1, 2013. This gives me some additional time to make a plan for promotion of this, my second novel to reach print. Promotion is essential to publication, because publication by itself is an empty reward.  Without distribution and...Read More

September 21, 2012 By Mary Hutchings Reed We talked in July about letting a scene build gradually in order to give the reader the experience of being there, and in August we talked about finding words. Today, I’d like to write about the sentences that hold those words and how to write a sentence in...Read More

All writers know that if you pay an editor to review your manuscript, they’ll earn their fee and then some. At the suggestion of my agent, I recently solicited the feedback of a “developmental editor” who lacerated 25 pages at a cost of $200. She says she read 50, and she was confident I’d get...Read More

Try rhymezone.com. It’s absolutely essential if you want to write rhyming poetry with any hope of avoiding the obvious. Be careful, though — desperate use of rhymezone may cause groans. Also, thesaurus.com offers a “word of the day” and fun facts, like the medical word for sunburn, “erythema solare,” and word games employing techniques magicians...Read More

  August 17, 2012 Lawyers make good writers because we’ve learned to be careful with words. To us, words have both a precise and a nuanced meaning, not just a Black’s definition, but also an entire history of consequences and implications, as recorded in volumes of precedent. Words are powerful. Words are the tools of...Read More

I just made 30+ minor edits to Warming Up, the novel which will be published by She Writes Press in the fall. This is after my agent sent her 30+ “pick-ups” over the weekend–little things like commas, and extra spaces, and the occasional clunker of a word. This, after the thing has been read word-for-word...Read More