It’s July! Summer is in full swing, and the DIY MFA Street Team has been hard at work reading The Book and posting their reviews out into the world. If you were wondering what others think of The Book, make sure you check Goodreads, Amazon, B&N.com, and iBooks. You won’t be disappointed. These past few… Read more »
Do you have a favorite season, one you embrace more than all the others? For me, living in Northeast U.S. and teaching for a profession, it’s summer. Besides the longer days and warmth of the sun, summer also means, “School’s Out!” It means freedom from external structure, and the opportunity to create new structures for… Read more »
Recently I pitched an editor a blog post idea. When her acceptance popped into my email I did my usual cheer and happy dance. Ideas for the piece filled my brain. I plopped back in my chair and fired off my next question, “When would you like the piece?” The editor responded with a generous… Read more »
As much as we love our protagonists, we can’t help but feel a strange or “corrupt” affinity for our antagonists. After all, the antagonist’s main role is to make the protagonist’s life difficult. However, this unique character relationship – er, conflict – is more important than we might think it is. Not only does it… Read more »
As we all know, in writing there are so many different elements to juggle: characters, plot, pacing, description, voice, dialogue…and that’s just the start. It’s not uncommon for a few storytelling elements to be shoved to the back of the stage as we write, but today I want to talk about one that really shouldn’t… Read more »
I knew I was a devotee of Gabriela’s DIY MFA philosophy, but I didn’t know by how much until I read her book. I joined the team and started writing columns for the site a year and a half ago. My writing has gone a wild ride since then. When I started, I was a lowly… Read more »
As writers, there’s a specific moment we all dream about. It’s the moment that motivates us and drives us to write our book in the first place. No, it’s not first holding a copy of our books in our own hands, though that’s a pretty great moment. It’s also not seeing our books on store… Read more »
A few weeks ago while I browsed through the YA aisle in Barnes and Noble, I flipped through the Q&A section in the back of one of Lauren Oliver’s books. One of the things Oliver cited as inspiration for her popular Delirium trilogy was something she’d read that said all stories are either about love… Read more »
You’ve finished writing your novel. Congratulations! Writing a book may be the first step, but it’s not an easy one. Celebrate the accomplishment, and get to work on the next steps. Collect feedback from CPs and beta readers. Revise and edit. Then, once you’ve gone over every word, polishing all of them to a bright… Read more »
(Web Editor’s Note: This is an article first pubbed in June 2014 we thought we’d dig out of the archives and share again!) “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” I remember reading that line, in a classroom in Texas in August, with my collared uniform shirt scratching my neck, thinking, “Compare someone you love to… Read more »
