Once upon a time, a workshop was considered a place where you did the work. Think of a carpenter’s workshop, with sawdust covering the tables and coils or scraps of wood littering the floors. Or consider Santa’s workshop, where elves engage in the cheery job of making toys for all the good little children of… Read more »
At the end of January, I pulled out an old notebook and started journaling. Eleven months and nine notebooks later, I have written something just about every day since then. (Okay, I’m not counting the week I was on vacation at the end of June. I gave myself a free pass on that. After all,… Read more »
Emma Dhesi is a book coach, novelist, and the author of Launch Pad: The Countdown To Writing Your Book. Gabriela Pereira: What led you to become a book coach and how did your own writing journey take you there? Emma Dhesi: I was a bit of a slow starter to the publishing world. I’d been… Read more »
Today’s episode is our monthly Craft Jam. This is a new feature at DIY MFA, where once a month, Lori and I will be jamming about the craft. In these episodes, we’ll be doing a deep dive into various craft topics like character development, story structure, world building and more. This month’s episode is a deep… Read more »
Today is our 400th Episode Extravaganza and I have the pleasure of sitting down with our podcast producer, Lori Walker. Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter especially for our podcast listeners. Every month, you’ll get an email from our podcast producer with… Read more »
[Part of this post was originally published in January 2014 here and another part of it was originally published in April 2017 here.] The new year always makes me want to reevaluate my creative process and push myself to become a more productive writer. This year is no different. As I’ve been thinking about creativity,… Read more »
Hey word nerds! The holiday season is in full swing, so we thought we would present a holiday-themed round-up full of posts from our archives for you to enjoy. Whether you want some advice on how to get some writing in during this busy time or maybe you want to explore some podcast episodes or… Read more »
Hey y’all. Lori here. As many of our readers know, today is American Thanksgiving. Many families take a turn going around the table and everyone says what they are thankful for. Fortunately, my family does not do this because I find the answers typical, saccharine, and not very sincere when you compare them to words… Read more »
Seven summers ago, I walked into a small conference room at the Writer’s Digest Conference, wondering what I was doing there. The topic was YA literature, and while I was interested in YA, the novel I was working on was for adults. I think it’s safe to say that if there had been anything more… Read more »
In an effort to get our fellow word nerds to know Team DIY MFA a bit better, we decided to commandeer one of the #5onFri slots and talk about our favorite books. Predictably, each member approached the notion of “favorite” in a different way and each of us chose a different favorite. We’re a team… Read more »
