Category: How To and Tips
‘Love, Heather’: This Isn’t Your Mamma’s High School
The main character of my new book, ‘Love, Heather’(Crooked Lane Books, coming out Oct 8th) is Stevie. She is an insufferable know-it-all, she’s funny, she’s infuriating, and she loves 80s and 90s movies. I loved writing Stevie, and she really was drawn from parts of me, and also added to parts of me in that […]
On Being A Published Author: The Fantasy Versus the Reality
The irony of releasing a second (or third, or fourth) book into the wild is that there is almost zero time left to create the words that allowed you to release a book. This is not something people tell you about in those blissfully ignorant unpublished years, when your fantasies about being published may include […]
Writing Needs Solitude AND Community, or How I Manage to Keep On Keeping On
Because I am the director of a small press and of a national reading series, as well as an author, I’m often asked how I manage it all. When it comes to WTAW Press and Why There Are Words, I wear every hat conceivable in the organization I founded. I publish, edit, and market and […]
Do You Feel Lucky?
Someone told me the other day that I’m lucky. I smiled and agreed. And then on the bus home I thought some more about luck; about what it is, if it’s in fact anything at all. And I realised that I’m no luckier than anyone else. It’s a choice. I choose to be lucky. I […]
On Writing a Series by Nan Reinhardt
Author Anne Lamott tells a story about a time when her little brother was overwhelmed with a science project that he’d put off until the last minute. It involved cataloguing birds. The night before it was due, he turned to his father and, in despair, asked, “How will I ever get this all done?” His […]
The Big Day: Book Launch Tips
Imagine if you will, it’s the night before your big day. You run through your checklist, again, just to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything; dress–check, speeches–check, hair appointment–check, wine ordered–check, cake collected–check, guest list–check. Everything seems in order. Jittery, you decide to text a close friend you’ve invited to double check she’s still coming […]
How Counselling Helps Me Cope With Feedback
It’s taken me fifteen years to pluck up the courage to seek out a counsellor. My written escapades into fictional worlds could only hold the metaphorical demons at bay for so long. So here I am, six months into my journey, and I feel like a spinning top laced with hallucinogenic drugs. My brain feels […]
How to Determine Who to Ask for Feedback to Your Writing
Discernment can be defined as “the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure.” This term, however, is most often associated within a spiritual context to obtain direction and understanding. But when you’re a writer, discernment is one of the most important, if not the most important factor in how you will […]
Why Bother Writing?
Imagine you are standing in front of a long, high wall built from giant moss-covered stone. Imagine that you want, more than anything, to get over that wall. The wall is festooned with ladders, allowing you to believe that getting to one of the ladders and climbing up and over the wall will be a […]
In Praise of Slow Writing (and Reading)
“[T]houghtful and quintessentially Southern … The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt unfolds like a magnolia, slowly revealing a languid beauty.” —Publishers Weekly In my household, we have pet snails. Around six common garden snails call our terrarium home, each the size of a dime, the first of which my nine-year-old daughter found in her fairy garden. […]
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