Here’s a quick sneak peek of our flagship course DIY MFA 101. We have a private, members-only website for the class, with exciting features to make accessing the course materials easy. The workshops unlock sequentially on different weeks of the class. Each workshop contains three video lessons with companion worksheets. We also include an audio-only version and… Read more »
Welcome to our very first podcast interview. My goal with these interviews is for you to hear directly from top authors, agents, editors and book industry experts. It is such a pleasure to be interviewing the fabulous author, and a good friend, Karen Dionne, for our first interview. Karen is the internationally published author of Freezing… Read more »
“Write beautifully, with a strong, distinctive voice, and have a premise worthy of such great writing.” These words–from my own agent (Jeff Kleinman at Folio Literary Management)–are probably the best advice I’ve ever received as a writer. After all, the #1 way to improve your odds of getting published is to write a great book so… Read more »
The first five pages of your manuscript are SO important. Not only do they set the tone for your entire story, but when you submit your novel to an agent, the first five pages are the first thing (aside from your query) that the agent is going to see. This means that you have to… Read more »
Go to any bookstore or library in China and you’ll find hundreds of novels written in boxlike characters made up of different undulating strokes and curvy lines (like this: 爱). In a large bookstore chain like XinHua, you’ll find those same books stacked alongside a section of “foreign works,” often written in English or their… Read more »
The notion that one should not understand too much about how to write is very common in writing workshops across the country. The refrain is that one should only write. I don’t think that attitude is helpful. We value experiment in science; we respect practice and rehearsal in theater and music; yet many fiction writers… Read more »
Today’s episode is all about what happens when your characters start getting ideas and do something completely unexpected. Scary as it may seem, these moments are gold, and you’ve got to run with them. By allowing your character to act in a manner exactly opposite of what is expected, you give a new dimension to… Read more »
Okay! I wrote a bunch of short stories—now what do I do with them? – The Next Jane Austen Congrats! You’ve put on your silvery boxing pants, got your boxing gloves on, stuck that plastic guard between your teeth. Finishing something is no small accomplishment. (Pumping “Eye of the Tiger” at full blast during the… Read more »
People think creativity exists only when options are endless. The truth is that infinite possibilities can be paralyzing. There’s research to support this: that when people have too many options, they’re much less likely to take decisive action. But setting limits for your writing can be a good thing. It’s only in limiting your choices… Read more »
Thanks so much for listening to DIY MFA Radio! This weekly show offers tips and techniques that you can apply to your writing practice right now. In today’s episode, I’ll show you a simple three-step process to help you pump up your writing with prompts. When I first started writing in earnest, I didn’t know what to… Read more »
