Over the last several weeks, several months, truthfully, it’s felt like everyone I know, including myself, has been running on empty in most areas of life. At the very beginning of this “new normal” period, every day was a bit of an unknown. From not really knowing how long the pandemic was going to last,… Read more »
Whenever I’m asked who my dream dinner guest is, I still say: Anthony Bourdain. For years, I imagined sharing a meal with him in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant having giant belly laughs and leaving with a full heart. I don’t believe I’m alone in that. Some people are born storytellers. They know how to grab an… Read more »
Jeanette the Curriculum Unicorn here with your writerly wisdom. Have you ever asked yourself the right questions so that the answer is yes? Like this first one that is top of mind: Can I really write a book? Does that thought seem familiar? I can’t even express how many times those words have gone through… Read more »
As writers, I’m sure we’ve all heard our fair share of colorful writing advice from famous authors. From the controversial “Write drunk, edit sober” (frequently attributed to Ernest Hemingway, but actually sourced from a novel by Peter de Vries) to the unorthodox suggestion of “Get a cat” (one of my personal favorites, courtesy of Muriel… Read more »
You may imagine that the age categories for kidlit are neatly defined. Here at DIY MFA we’ve laid out what the boundaries typically are, to give writers a guideline. But we have to admit: there’s an awful lot of wiggle room. Dividing books by age is an imperfect measurement, because kids vary so widely in… Read more »
In my previous article, I took you through the steps of starting a daily routine that will help you become more aware of yourself and your Writer’s Intuition. I want to tell you a secret about my own experience with this exercise. When I first started, I had a grand plan of taking my daily… Read more »
I am an alumna of Pixels to Platform and DIY MFA 101. In my writing and life as a writer, I incorporate practices from my teaching as a certified Breath Qigong Yoga and Tai Chi instructor. I am also studying to be certified as a WELL Accredited Professional for health and wellness in building design…. Read more »
If someone had told me in my twenties, I’d write a memoir about my mental illness, I’d have replied that they were crazy. Having been diagnosed with mental illness since I was a kid, it was something I’d always felt the need to hide. It was shameful, ugly, and not for polite company. Certainly, not… Read more »
In How to Write a Romantic Comedy Novel, Part 1, I spoke of the highly recommended, must have at your fingertips tools to gather prior to writing a romantic comedy. Among those tools, a styptic pencil rated at the top of the list. Why? The secret is out. Each word is bled, drop by precious… Read more »
The sticker on my laptop reading “I am silently correcting your grammar” might make me chuckle, but it is not, in fact, true. As an editor, people sometimes send me screenshots of misspellings and grammatical errors that they found funny. Again, I may chuckle, but before I declare that writing “wrong,” I must first make… Read more »
