It's a big beautiful lit mag world! Let's Talk Literary Magazines If you caught my introductory post on literary magazines (lit mags) last month, then you might already be thinking about sending out your first submission to a journal. So where do you begin? Well, to start, you want to make sure your piece is ready for […]

I travel a lot. In part because my day job requires it of me, but in part simply because it’s something I love to do—meeting new people, trying new foods, getting to see parts of the world I have only read about or seen on TV.  But every time I get on a plane and […]

In Stephen King’s On Writing—a work of creative nonfiction that blends memoir with advice on writing craft—the author talks about keeping track of rejection slips for some of his earliest short stories. He hammered a nail into his wall and every time he got a rejection, he slipped it onto the nail and then tried again. […]

Do you find yourself struggling with writing? Is finding inspiration difficult, or do you perhaps feel out of practice? Maybe you want to get some words on a page, but have no idea where to start?  Well, whether or not you find yourself struggling with writing, writing prompts are a beautiful concept that can benefit […]

When I first started writing, I wrote stories filled with exposition or summary without even knowing it. I was writing by instinct based on my years of experience as a reader and I didn’t know the technical aspects of writing, the craft of developing stories that work. That’s a great phase to be in, because […]

Who are you anyway? One of the biggest struggles for emerging writers is how to find your voice as a writer, or more precisely, understanding your true voice. The quick answer here? You don’t need to do anything special to find it, it’s already there. Just write. Write a lot. Your voice will become evident […]

You sit down to write, eager to translate the words and images in your head onto the page. Perhaps it takes a few minutes to settle in, but you’re soon deep into your work-in-progress. Two hours later you look up, astonished that the world outside your book exists and wondering where the time went. Have […]

Many of us wish the world was a kinder and more compassionate place. We’re clear that political dialogue should be constructive rather than destructive, and people attacking one another will not help us solve our problems or heal the world’s seemingly intractable divisions. We’re good humans, or we try to be. We know that being […]

What's up with the writing police? Experts abound in every field and every expert offers advice from their own world-view. The writing advice most often offered to new writers is: “You should write every day.”  I hate this kind of writing advice. To be clear, I’m not saying you shouldn’t write every day -- it’s not the […]

Can you spare 10 minutes? Writing practice always varies from writer to writer. It's not what it looks like that necessarily matters -- the details can vary but the need for a considered writing practice never goes away, even for published writers. There was a time, about a decade ago now, when I could not […]

Nothing has made more difference to my writing life than working with mentors -- writers with more experience than I had at the time who could encourage me to push myself and my writing further than I know I'd have been able to do working on my own. I can't say enough about how that […]

I believe that writing groups can really push writers ahead -- much more quickly than when writers just trudge along on their own. Here are some useful tips to help create and sustain effective and supportive writing groups: I hope they help! For most of the past decade, I’ve been in one writing group or […]