30 Things I’ve Learned About the Writing Life
On Thanksgiving, I celebrated 30 years since the sale of my first book. It’s a crazy milestone and made me consider this writing and publishing [Read More]
On Thanksgiving, I celebrated 30 years since the sale of my first book. It’s a crazy milestone and made me consider this writing and publishing [Read More]
Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with [Read More]
As the end of the year looms large, we writers should be thinking about strategic planning. I know—it sounds like work. Boring work. But, honestly, [Read More]
Theme is an often overlooked tool in a writer’s toolbox. Here’s another look at finding the greater meaning in your story. Several years ago [Read More]
Ruth Harris and I have both written about how there are no rigid rules for writing good fiction, only guidelines. Even guidelines don’t apply to [Read More]
A reader from Connecticut is finishing up her new novel this month, getting ready to send it out to agents. She sent me a good [Read More]
This post discusses the three types of compounds in English: compound nouns, compound modifiers, and compound verbs. Compound Nouns Compound nouns come in three forms: [Read More]
It’s no secret that the time-tested method of using cliffhangers at the end of your chapters or scenes is a sure-fire way to make that [Read More]
My father had his own set of proverbs that he dispensed like wisdom from the mountaintop. Even though it’s been decades since I lived in [Read More]
The soul of writing is specificity, yet all too often, we lean on general-purpose words instead of choosing the most precise ones. Most of our [Read More]
Writing a novel is a complicated equation involving a lot of variables and moving parts—not the least of which are the authors themselves. In fact, [Read More]
So you’d like your latest writing project to get moving faster. Great writers have felt the same. Don’t worry, it’s fixable. When the words stop, [Read More]
We’re three days into November. Or, as many of think about it, three days into National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Cathy wrote a great post [Read More]
By John Dorroh Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, a book that all writers need to own and use, convincingly suggests to develop [Read More]
Nathan Bransford is the author of the Jacob Wonderbar series and How to Write a Novel, which NY Times bestselling author Ransom Riggs called “the [Read More]
Some people talk about writing like they are chasing butterflies along the pretty garden paths of their manuscripts. Like their words frolick with Disney characters. [Read More]
Let’s face it, talking about writing the first pages of a novel is stressful. It can strike terror into the heart of even the most [Read More]
When I was 14 years old, I wrote a poem entitled “Does A Giraffe Ever Feel Small?” that tells the story of six animals and [Read More]
I’m a tinkerer by temperament. My most frequent nerdy joke with my writing students is that if you sat me down at a computer every [Read More]
Lynn Dickinson shares tips to help writers honestly examine their writing routines to make the changes necessary to achieve their writing goals. As an assignment, [Read More]
Over the course of four years, this poem morphed into a children’s book by the same name that I self-published with my friend and illustrator, [Read More]
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