Long before coming to terms with being an introvert, I worked the worst job ever. Each morning, my boss gave me a list of names and phone numbers to “cold call.” That meant picking up the phone and trying to get past a gatekeeping administrative assistant to talk to travel coordinators. These people had no… Read more »
Instagram tips for writers out on the internet can offer conflicting advice and complicated strategies. In this post, I’ll try to boil down the top three Instagram tips for writers so you can kick-start or enhance your author platform. Over the last two months, I doubled my Instagram followers from 400 to 800+ so I… Read more »
Writers, I’d like to talk about reading. Growing up, it was the form of entertainment universally endorsed by adults. Kids could watch too much TV or spend too many hours playing video games, but rarely did one get in trouble for reading too many books. (Although I’m sure some of you reading this have some… Read more »
A MacGuffin (sometimes spelled McGuffin) can be a way to draw your characters into the real story. There needs to be something going on at the beginning of the story to hook the reader in and show the characters being proactive—before the full implications of the plot crash down on them. A MacGuffin is an… Read more »
A few weeks ago at a dinner party, I fielded one of my least favorite questions: “What do you do?” In response, I smiled blandly, mentioned my writing, and braced myself for the usual barrage of follow-ups: “How do you support yourself?” “What do you write?” “What inspires you?” No, my writing doesn’t support me…. Read more »
Today, Lori is interviewing Ginny Kubitz Moyer. They’ll be talking about how she started writing her debut novel, The Seeing Garden, with the setting. Have you gotten the DIY MFA Starter Kit yet? This is a two week email series full of worksheets to help you DIY your MFA. You’ll learn more about how to… Read more »
Classification, like periodization, is arbitrary, and much of it derives from marketing. Where do we put in the bookstores, so interested people can find it? A quick tour of the internet, however, may lead us to paraphrase Ozzy Osbourne: How many bloody categories are there? Five, eight, ten? Keeping in mind that historical novels need… Read more »
Hey guys! It’s Alysen back with you, and boy, did you have a lot to say about my last article on Defining SFF. Overwhelmingly, the feedback was a massive group sigh of relief that you are not alone in that vague fog of what the heck. Well, unless you’re my mom. She prefers to be… Read more »
You’ve written your heart out because you know you have a story to tell and you’re the only one to tell it—a story, a novel, a narrative, a memoir, an article, an essay, a letter. And then suddenly you stop. At first, it’s not quite clear that you’re in deep trouble. This happens all the… Read more »
Why both matter and how to get them on the page, from manuscript to query letter On weekend evenings, when the kids are finally asleep, my husband and I turn on the TV and scroll through the streaming platforms, searching for something to watch. We have a hard time agreeing on how to spend our… Read more »
