Do you ever skip a paragraph because you already know what it says? The results of writing can be crazy weird, amen-astonishing, way captivating, or dull. There are many means to keep authors away from cliché writing habits:

• How do you produce tread-on-coals stimulating character introductions?
• Write interesting descriptive environments?
• Create amazing dialogue?
• How do you identify and crush “crutch” words?

We want to compel readers to hang on every kick-starter-spirited sentence. It's easy once you know where the sink-holes await.

Linda Loveland Reid is the author of two novels. Her stories, memoirs, essays, and poems are published in over a dozen anthologies and magazines. She is a graduate of Sonoma State University, and she currently lectures on art history for SSU and Dominican Universities in the Osher Lifelong Learning program.

In the 1970s, Linda was Associate Executive Director of United Way for the North Bay. She later founded an insurance firm in Santa Rosa specializing in employee benefits. Now retired, Linda’s children and grandchildren run the shop. Other activities include figurative oil painting and directing community theater in Sonoma and Marin Counties. This September she will direct Dylan Thomas’s "Under Milk Wood."

Linda is past president of Redwood Writers and recipient of the prestigious Jack London Award.