Category: How To and Tips
Listening Hard to Write Well
By Amy L. Bernstein The acclaimed writer Eudora Welty once noted that “Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.” Wow. There’s so much for a writer to unpack in this brief but profound observation. How many times have I rushed headlong into […]
The Quest for Ideas
As I near the end of the first draft of my fourth novel, I’m often asked where I get my ideas. The answer is easy, and three-fold: from life, from long walks with my dogs, and from my job as an ESL teacher. Dog walks are my go-to when I get stuck on a plot […]
Finding the Funny in Your Mysteries and Thrillers
Finding the Funny in Your Mysteries and Thrillers Humorous Thrillers. That sounds like an oxymoron. How can there be anything funny about murder, mayhem, and mystery? Yet, finding the comedy in crime has rocketed true crime to the top of the podcasting world. As of this month, three of the top ten podcasts are in […]
The Power of the Group: How a Writing Group can Support, Inspire, and Sustain a Writer
The year was 2002. Michelle Kwan had a devastating fall in her long program at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, the Queen Mother died, and Michael Jackson briefly dangled his baby off a Berlin balcony. I was new to the city of Ottawa and didn’t know many people. In an effort to be more […]
Four Books into the Publishing Game, My Best Writing Tip is to be a Feminist
Four Books into the Publishing Game, My Best Writing Tip is to be a Feminist In 2014, when my first book came out, people would ask me how excited I was. While I certainly was thrilled, I was also mostly relieved, because no longer would I be a writer without a book. That year was […]
Necessary Fiction: Writing My Debut Novel
Necessary Fiction: Writing My Debut Novel Janet Kelley My book, Taint: A Novel, was published by Atmosphere Press in December, 2021. My first handwritten drafts were produced for a novel writing class with Ben Brooks at Emerson College in Boston. In the year 2006. You do the calculus. A wedding, a move from Indiana to […]
How Writing Saved Me From A Narcissist
I always wanted to write a novel. I always knew that one day I would. However, my yearning was overshadowed by life events such as falling in love, marriage, establishing a business with my husband, buying our first home, having two wonderful children, bringing them up and having more pets in the house than sense. […]
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Pitching to Overseas Markets
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Pitching to Overseas Markets By Christina Hamlett On one of the writer-centric pages I follow on Facebook, an author was lamenting she hadn’t been able to get any US publisher nibbles on her new manuscript. No less than twenty respondents advised, “If nothing works, you can always sell it to someplace like England.” […]
Important Lessons I’ve Learned From Writing Historical Mysteries
Do you like historical mysteries? I do. I love reading historical mysteries—Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody, Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs, Rhys Bowen’s Georgiana Rannoch (and her standalones), Sujata Massey’s Perveen Mistry, and Mariah Frederick’s Jane Prescott, L.A. Chandlar’s Lane Sanders and more. I also love writing historical mysteries. I’ve written nonfiction books, contemporary suspense, and children’s […]
When an Idea “Cuts in Line”
When an Idea “Cuts in Line” By Dallas Woodburn In 2017, my goal was to finish a novel manuscript. At the time, the Word document on my computer contained nothing more than a title, a handful of scenes, and a burgeoning sense of great possibility. The idea for my young adult novel The Best Week That […]
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