Category: How To and Tips
Rejection vs. Failure
“You do your best work after your biggest disasters.” Tim Robbins, as quoted in The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp Finding neither a publisher, nor an agent, for my memoir after three years of looking does not constitute my life’s biggest disaster, but in terms of my writing it did. There’s no creative project into which I […]
Get the Imp off my Shoulder
I’ve been having a hard time keeping pre-launch publicity efforts from totally derailing my creative spirit. These days I have two little imps, one on each shoulder, each spurring me in different directions. One wants me to write content pieces, blog, update social media and my mailing lists, and the other screaming at me that […]
A Writer’s Life: Turn Your Dream Novel into Reality
It’s a seamless transition, the process of a dream becoming reality, just as metamorphosis is to a butterfly. Somewhere, along the six-year journey of completing my first novel, I realized that I no longer dreamt of the idealistic notion of being a writer. I was one. Ten years ago, I had lost my mother to […]
Writing – and Parenting – In the Dark
I didn’t start writing seriously until 2013. Not because I was trying to develop my craft, or because I wanted to collect more life experiences, but because that was the year my youngest turned four, and up until then I hadn’t strung together three consecutive hours of sleep since 2005. As a single mother of […]
Finding Your Purpose As A Writer
The books of my youth erased me. Growing up, I read Nancy Drew mysteries long past my bedtime. I owned all the hardcover, yellow-spine books about the exploits of the young detective. I idolized my namesake driving her blue convertible through the idyllic town of River Heights with her red hair blowing in the breeze. […]
Surviving the Dank and Lonely Editing Cave
As I write in this terribly uncomfortable chair, I’ve just finished over five months of straight editing. Five. Straight. Months. All writers know the woes of editing: The empty loneliness that sometimes accompanies us in our dark, dank, and dusty writing caves. The desire to slam your face into your keyboard because hey, maybe that […]
The Distracted Writer
It is always my intention to turn off wi-fi when I write. It has yet to happen. What if I need to look something up? After all, I write historical fiction and there is always a fact to check, a photo to look at, a map to consider. I often wonder how people wrote before […]
It’s Not Rejection; It’s Feedback.
I imagine the easygoing among us don’t remember their first time receiving constructive criticism; teflon, some people, or indifferent. Not me. In primary school the report card system was E for excellent, S for satisfactory, and U for unsatisfactory. I swam in a pool of excellence until the day I received an S in handwriting. By the […]
How To Write What Hurts
You have a story to tell; something you’ve experienced that can help other people. It’s been burning inside of you, screaming that you give it a voice. But, as I know too well, sitting in front of the computer is a completely different animal. Words freeze up as thoughts refuse to be expressed. Memories hide […]
Transitioning From Freelance to Full-Time Writer
How I Found Freelance Writing Jobs In fall 2015, I started researching how to build a freelance writing business to make money. I signed up on Upwork.com and was able to search for assignments. I also began researching start-ups in my home city, Chicago. Blogs are all the rage for companies these days. They drive […]
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