Social media is the bane of an introvert writer’s existence. For the extrovert writer, social media is a personal time siphon. Either way, social media has become an obstacle course every writer must negotiate, whether as a hobbyist looking to learn more or as a professional trying to build a platform. Here are a few suggestions for your writing life: Explore all the options. Facebook is the largest of the social sites, with Twitter and Instagram right on its heels. … Read More »

Almost from the time we can hold a pencil (or hit a key these days), we are taught the “rules” of writing. Punctuation. The grammar forms of Standard English. Beginning. Middle. End. When we learn to write for the masses, we start hearing the word “craft” bandied about. Learning “craft” is related to the specifics for different forms of writing: journalism versus script-writing vs short story vs novel vs memoir vs creative non-fiction. Craft is the tools and techniques we … Read More »

Fiction or non-fiction, a time comes in every manuscript’s evolution when we, the writer, just want to know one thing. Is it working? Maybe we’re so far out to sea in a work that we can no longer see the shoreline. Perhaps we’ve sailed it harbor-to-harbor, maybe even twice, but still aren’t quite sure where the shoals lie. Or, the scariest possibility of all, there’s miles of smooth seas under the hull of our work and safe harbor in sight … Read More »

We all have limitations in life, physical or mental or both, but most American fiction is written from the viewpoint of an average, or above average, able-bodied, mentally-stable perspective. Of the stories that aren’t, many of them are written about or for children and teens. By adding adult characters with disabilities to our stories, we can give adults living with life-long limitations characters they can relate to in stories that value those characters’ contribution to moving the story forward. Among … Read More »

We’ve blocked off our time and we’ve sat ourselves down and we’ve ignored the distractions of our day to get words on the page. But at some point, our enthusiasm winds down. We find ourselves grasping for the next paragraph and then the next line and then the next word, feeling as if our work is going nowhere. We’re lost. Our work has not only veered off the road of its through line, it isn’t even on the side road … Read More »

Marking the change of one year to the next often spurs us to reflect on the recent past and consider how we might change our lives for the better. For writers, this reflection inevitably includes looking at what we have accomplished in our writing life over the past year. For some, this means adding up their published projects. For others, it’s adding up a word count on a work in progress. In 2018, will you finish a book started years … Read More »