Category: How To and Tips
Take a Little Off the Top: Seven Tips to Help You Self-Edit Your Novel Manuscript
By Susan K. Hamilton There’s no feeling quite like completing the first draft of your manuscript. There is an immense feeling of satisfaction, even of triumph. That giddiness, however, can quickly be subsumed by the dawning realization of what’s on the horizon: editing. Editing can be a daunting prospect, but it is one hundred percent […]
Writing for Small Markets Gives You Power
By Elizabeth Ann Quirino When you pitch your writing, or manuscripts, and you’re told “You’re a niche market. Ethnic topics are a hard sell,” don’t be discouraged. Do not feel like you are the small fish in a big pond. There is an advantage to being a writer in a niche market. A niche market […]
Why Storytelling Matters
One of the important things I’ve learned over the course of my long career as an academic administrator is that we define ourselves as human beings through storytelling. After I retired, I became inspired to write my own life’s story, resulting in my first book, Where the Water Meets the Sand. The experience of writing my memoir […]
The New Mom Question: How Long Before I Can Write Again?
By Vanessa Lillie www.vanessalillie.com My mother said to expect a burst of energy before going into labor. With me, she’d been throwing a baby shower for a friend. With my brother, she was picking pecans when her water broke. The burst of energy before I went into labor with my son is not something I […]
Memoir Writing Tips
I confess I’ve become a compulsive participant in memoir writing workshops. My first one was with Joyce Maynard in Guatemala in 2014, and my own memoir was born there under the volcanoes. Five years later, it will be published on October 1st. Listening to the authors sharing those drafts of memoirs in the writing circle […]
Psychology and Writing
The connections I’ve made, and resisted, between my career as a psychologist and my career as a writer have shifted over time. For many years, I felt the pull between my work as a psychologist and my desire to write as a constant conflict. I spent a considerable amount of time studying, working to get […]
Me And My Agent by Holly Seddon
Where to start? To be frank, I can’t think of another job like literary agent. It sits in the Venn diagram of creativity, inspiration, career management and business acumen. But that doesn’t really explain it. A good agent helps shape ideas, offers editorial notes on outlines and manuscripts, pitches novels to publishers and then argues […]
Who Is The Inspiration?
Nervous, scared, anxiously looking around the room, feeling like every word you say is being judged. This are recognisable feelings in everyone, and that is before you start to share your writing. But I’m not talking about the new writing students here, those who are determined to fill a lifelong ambition and who embark on […]
Self-belief vs Self-delusion
“One of the hardest parts of writing is walking that line between self-belief and self-delusion.” I spotted this tidbit on Twitter the other day and it struck a chord with me. As writers, we often hear talk of a lack of self-belief as the “imposter syndrome.” Most of us experience it, if not on a daily […]
The Purpose of Writing a Book About a Woman Without a Purpose Or: How to Turn a Problem to Advantage
In November three years ago I sat down to attempt the NaNoWriMo challenge of writing 50,000 words of a novel in a month. I had heard of the National Novel Writing Month before but dismissed it as a gimmick. In the event, it turned out to be a surprisingly positive experience, especially for a writer […]
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