I have a confession to make. My two daughters loved Junie B. Jones when they were little. Adored that whole (giant) series by Barbara Park. And I hated those books with a fiery passion. As a narrator, Junie B. was rude, impulsive and disobedient, with poor grammar and misspelled words to boot. She was my… Read more »
Thrillerfest is in just two weeks. Hear that? That’s my scream of glee. ThrillerFest is an annual conference for writers organized by International Thriller Writers (ITW). The event, now in its tenth year, brings together thousands of writers, agents, publishers and other industry professionals together each year. To borrow from Anchorman, it’s kind of a… Read more »
OMG, I have been holding onto this secret for weeks now and I’m so unbelievably excited to share the news. Drumroll please… DIY MFA is hosting its first ever online writing conference! I have been a combination of nervous and excited about this announcement and I haven’t been able to keep my head on straight for the past few… Read more »
Hey Word Nerds! Welcome to another episode of DIY MFA Radio! Today I want to talk to you about a crucial part of my own creative life: The Brain Book. It’s my portable office. When I have the Brain Book with me I know I can be creatively productive anytime, anywhere. Not only does the… Read more »
So far in our series Developing Themes In Your Stories, we’ve covered how understanding your protagonist’s character arc and developing your story’s premise sentence can help you consciously nurture literary themes. Today we’ll discuss a third way of mining for themes by looking outside your characters and studying the external conflict. Like with the previous… Read more »
In his early 20’s my dad was a beat reporter for the Kettering-Oakwood (KO) Times, a small local paper near Dayton, Ohio. It was there that he learned the proper way to dangle a Viceroy from his lips while yelling out of the corner of his mouth and pounding on a typewriter. He was ambitious,… Read more »
Hey Word Nerds! Thanks so much for being here with me today. In this episode we’re going to talk about something that’s near and dear to my heart and is a bit of DIY MFA’s core philosophy. It’s called honoring your reality. I usually only share this technique with my DIY MFA 101 course, but in light… Read more »
In the last four months, I’ve gone from a writing obsessed hobbyist to a querying hobbyist to an agented writer to a writer with a book on submission. Seeing my endless hours of toiling bear fruit is exiting and wonderful. But it’s also terrifying. Giving up control of my book has been hard. I never… Read more »
One of the best parts of BEA is all the free stuff. I mean, let’s be honest. It’s a bookworm’s dream. You get to meet your favorite authors, and get free, signed copies of their books. In some cases, these are ARCs (advanced reader copies). In other cases, they’re the actual, finished books. Yes. For… Read more »
Hey Word Nerds! Welcome to this week’s episode of DIY MFA Radio. Now that Book Expo America (BEA) is behind us, I wanted to take a look back at the conference and its notable moments and start looking ahead at the publishing industry and the trends I see coming up in the future. This year… Read more »
