Author Archive: Martha Conway
How Do You Get From 0 to 1? From Dreaming to Writing, Writers Tell Their Stories
After I graduated from college, I wanted to write a novel. I’d had this dream ever since I could remember. But first there was the small matter of supporting myself. I didn’t look for a full-time job; I wanted a job that would earn me enough money to pay for rent and food while still […]
How to Write about Something You Know Nothing About
I recently began taking piano lessons as an adult, and I can now tell you this for certain: I am no musician. On the first day, when I told my piano teacher that I wanted to learn to play ragtime, she said: “Why does everyone always want to tackle the hardest music first?” I didn’t […]
5 Stories about Publishing that are No Longer True (and maybe never were)
Maybe all professions like to scare young hopefuls — to weed the flock, so to speak — and the publishing industry, notorious for its gloom and doom predictions, is no exception. As a graduate student in a Creative Writing department, I heard all sorts of stories from teachers and other students that made it seem […]
How to Break Up with your Novel
To begin with, let me clarify: I don’t mean abandon your novel; I mean separate yourself from it. This has to happen eventually. For better or worse the novel you’ve written will come to term, and it will have to live (or not live) on its own, away from you. There may be any number […]
How many Beta Readers do you need?
Someone in my writing group recently sent his first chapters to five different people … and got five very different responses. The result: he’s more confused than ever. Beta readers—those readers you trust your manuscript to before sending it out to an agent, editor, or publishing house—can give valuable feedback. They read with more distance […]
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