It’s easy to learn about the basic benefits of guest posting—articles about it are all over the place (including this particularly excellent one from DIY MFA, not that I’m biased). Guest posting is a great way to give your blog a boost in traffic and grow awareness for a website, book, or other project. These… Read more »
Stephen King says, “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.” Most of us know that if we really want to improve our writing we need to read, a lot. But most of us also have day jobs, families, and adult responsibilities on top of… Read more »
There’s nothing better than getting lost in the world of a book, swept up not just in the story but the rich setting, a place so real you could imagine yourself there. Whether it’s an actual time and place in history, the far distant future, a modern city or a completely imagined fantasy world, a setting… Read more »
A few weeks ago I helped Gabriela launch a new quiz for DIY MFA called “What’s Your Storytelling Superpower?” Basically, you take this personality quiz, and based on your responses we tell you what kind of story you’d be good at writing. I don’t know about you, but I’ve taken plenty of online quizzes before…. Read more »
Life has ups and downs, and often our writing path follows them. When I was pregnant with my son, I had a horrible first trimester. I was sick, tired, and depressed for what felt like every minute of the day. My writing suffered. I stopped working on my novel; I didn’t blog for two months…. Read more »
Agents read hundreds of query letters every week, not to mention sample pages. It takes hours to get through them all, and it’s easy for the queries to start to run together. So how do you make your query stand out? A flashy font? A goofy intro? The truth is, the best queries are the… Read more »
Symbolism is a tricky element for writers to master. Its ability to represent ideas and qualities requires deeper thought than other literary elements do. But when symbolism is used effectively, it can make a story even more powerful and unforgettable. Plus, its purpose can serve as another way of nurturing literary themes. Today, we’ll look… Read more »
Every career has specific traits that only others in the same profession can relate to, like my husband, who is a service technician in the Tel-com industry. When he’s around other techs, they speak in code, T-1, PRI, and VoIP. When we’re in public he tells me the phone system each business uses, “That’s a… Read more »
After I signed my book contract, I thought I’d have a few weeks to let things sink in before editing began. I mistakenly thought I’d have a month or more to do nothing but pound out the first draft of book two. Nope. The discussions on editing and the cover began within a week, and… Read more »
Like many writers, I got the idea for my book, A Keeper’s Truth, in a dream, that four am buzz that had me giddy, watching the scene play out in excruciating detail, the characters as real as life, voices clear and strong in my head. Jotting the scene on paper wasn’t a conscious choice, but a necessity…. Read more »
