Have you gotten the DIY MFA Starter Kit yet? This is a two week email series full of worksheets to help you DIY your MFA, so you can get the “knowledge without the college.” You’ll learn more about how to write with focus, read with purpose, and build your community. You’ll also receive Writer Fuel, our newsletter full of words of wisdom and resources to help you keep the momentum going in your writing. And you’ll be the first to hear about other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! You can sign up with your email at diymfa.com/join.

In this episode I discuss:

• Why it’s important not just to build something, but build the right thing.
• How failure plays into innovation, and why we should accept it rather than avoid it.
• How originality is about the execution of the idea, rather than the idea itself.
• Why it’s crucial to embrace the concept of “good enough.”

Link to Episode 476

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to Apple or Spotify and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 476: Lesson 1 – Jump First, Build After appeared first on DIY MFA.

Have you gotten the DIY MFA Starter Kit yet? This is a two week email series full of worksheets to help you DIY your MFA. You’ll learn more about how to write with focus, read with purpose, and build your community. You’ll also start getting Writer Fuel, our newsletter full of words of wisdom and resources to help you keep the momentum going in your writing. And you’ll be the first to hear about other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! You can sign up with your email at diymfa.com/join.

In this episode M.T. Anderson and I discuss:

• Weaving events from your real life into a fantastical story
• Why you need to have rules for the magic you create in order for it to be fun.
• How to reverse engineer and perfect the opening of your novel.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About M.T. Anderson

M. T. Anderson has written stories for adults, picture books for children, adventure novels for young readers, graphic novel adaptations of ancient French tales, and several books for older readers (both teens and adults). His satirical book Feed was a Finalist for the National Book Award and was the winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize. Both Time Magazine and National Public Radio have included it on their lists of the best 100 YA novels of all time. Another satirical science fiction novel, Landscape with Invisible Hand, has been turned into a movie starring Tiffany Haddish and Asante Blackk. 

The first volume of Anderson’s Octavian Nothing saga, The Pox Party, won the National Book Award and the Boston Globe / Horn Book Prize. The second volume, The Kingdom on the Waves, was a New York Times best-seller. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, a tragicomic spy story for young goblins written with Newbery-Honor winner Eugene Yelchin, was a Finalist for the National Book Award in 2018. 

Anderson’s nonfiction book Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad was long-listed for the National Book Award. 

He has published stories for adults in literary journals like The Northwest Review, The Colorado Review, and Conjunctions. Several of his stories have appeared in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collections. His nonfiction articles and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Slate, and Salon. 

He has curated concerts that bring together text and classical music all over New England. 

You can find him on his website or follow him on Twitter.

Elf Dog and Owl Head

From the singular imagination of National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson comes a magical adventure about a boy and his dog—or a dog and her boy—and a forest of wonders hidden in plain sight.

Clay has had his fill of home life. A global plague has brought the world to a screeching halt, and with little to look forward to but a summer of video-calling friends, vying with annoying sisters for the family computer, and tuning out his parents’ financial worries, he’s only too happy to retreat to the woods. From the moment the elegant little dog with the ornate collar appears like an apparition among the trees, Clay sees something uncanny in her. With this mysterious Elphinore as guide, he’ll glimpse ancient secrets folded all but invisibly into the forest. Each day the dog leads Clay down paths he never knew existed, deeper into the unknown. But they aren’t alone in their surreal adventures. There are traps and terrors in the woods, too, and if Clay isn’t careful, he might stray off the path and lose his way forever. Graced with evocative black-and-white illustrations by Junyi Wu, Elf Dog and Owl Head is heartfelt and exhilarating, wry and poignant, seamlessly merging the fantastic and the familiar in a tale both timely and timeless.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 468

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 468: Raise Your Story’s Stakes with Tension and Surprise – Interview with M.T. Anderson appeared first on DIY MFA.

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 recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for March is Voice and Narration, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

Correction: During the interview, the author mistakenly identifies butter chicken or murgh makhni as a British dish invented in the UK by Indian immigrants. He later clarified that butter chicken was in fact invented in New Delhi. Chicken tikka masala is actually the British dish.

In this episode Jinwoo Chong and Lori discuss:

• Immigration as synthesis.
• What it means to blend speculative fiction and neo-noir genres
• How the immigrant experience helped to shape his book.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About Jinwoo Chong

Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novel Flux, coming March 21, 2023 from Melville House. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Florida Review, CRAFT, and Salamander.

He received the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for Fiction from The Southern Review and a special mention in the 2022 Pushcart Prize anthology, as well as recognition from The Sewanee Review, Tin House and Zoetrope: All-Story.

He received an MFA from Columbia University and is an editorial assistant at One Story.

You can find him on his website or follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Flux

A blazingly original and stylish debut novel about a young man whose reality unravels when he suspects his employers have inadvertently discovered time travel and are covering up a string of violent crimes.

Four days before Christmas, 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, 28-year-old Brandon loses his job after a hostile takeover of his big-media employer, and 48-year-old Blue, a key witness in a criminal trial against an infamous now-defunct tech startup, struggles to reconnect with his family.

So begins Jinwoo Chong’s dazzling, time-bending and surreal literary debut that blends elements of neo-noir and speculative fiction as the lives of the lives of Bo, Brandon and Blue begin to intersect, uncovering a vast network of secrets and an experimental technology that threatens to upend life itself. Intertwined with them is the saga of an iconic 80s detective show, Raider, whose star actor has imploded spectacularly after revelations of long-term, concealed abuse.

Flux is a haunting and sometimes shocking exploration of the cyclical nature of grief, of moving past trauma, and of the pervasive nature of whiteness within the development of Asian identity in America.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 454

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 454: Exploring Themes of Grief and Loneliness in a Neo-Noir Speculative Novel – Interview with Jinwoo Chong appeared first on DIY MFA.

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 recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for April is Word Choice and Micro Craft, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Steven James and I discuss:

• The importance of what is, not what appears to be.
• Giving readers what they don’t know they want.
• How plot isn’t about events, but about the collision of desires.

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About Steven James

Steven James is the bestselling, critically acclaimed author of eighteen novels that have won or been shortlisted for more than a dozen national and international awards. His thrillers have been praised by Suspense Magazine, Booklist, and the New York Journal of Books and received starred reviews from both Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, who called his work “thought-provoking” and “riveting.” He has also written two award-winning books on the craft of writing, Story Trumps Structure and Troubleshooting Your Novel. When he’s not writing, he teaches storytelling at events around the globe and hosts the weekly podcast, The Story Blender.

You can find him on his website or follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The Art of the Tale

Whether your audience is a boardroom of executives, a classroom of students, or an auditorium full of eager listeners, the right story, well told, can transform and impact your presentation like nothing else. The Art of the Tale shows you how.

Everyone, regardless of their background and training, can improve their storytelling abilities. But what is a story? How can you tell it in a way that delights and informs your listeners? Take a journey into the keys to great storytelling with two of the country’s top experts on story presentation and speech writing.

In The Art of the Tale, seasoned storytellers Steven James and Tom Morrisey team up and tap into their decades of experience to show you how to prepare stellar presentations, tell stories in your own unique way, adapt your material to different groups of listeners, and gain confidence in your ability as a speaker. In this book, you’ll learn why:

• practice doesn’t make perfect.
• you should never tell the same story twice.
• it’s best to avoid memorizing your stories.

You’ll also find helpful hints on:

• gaining confidence in your storytelling ability.
• connecting with your audience.
• matching your expectations with those of your listeners.
• shaping your memories into inspiring messages.
• understanding what makes a story work.
• drawing truth out of the stories you wish to tell.
• crafting and remembering stories.

Learn how to tell stories more effectively, lead and teach more creatively, and prepare your message in less time by using this unique resource provided by two of the nation’s premier communicators.

Broker of Lies

When Travis Brock, a high-level Pentagon redactor with an eidetic memory, finds a clue to solving the tragic arson that took his wife from him, he risks everything to find the truth―and chances losing himself in the process.

With a terror attack looming on the horizon and a pair of assassins on his tail, Brock drops off the grid and joins forces with a disavowed Homeland Security operative. Together they race to stop the attack before Brock is neutralized by the people he trusts the most.

From critically acclaimed, bestselling novelist Steven James comes a smart, wire-tight, and emotionally resonant thriller that asks just how far across the line we might go to see justice carried out.

If you decide to check out the books, we hope you’ll do so via these Amazon affiliate links: The Art of the Tale and Broker of Lies, where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 452

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 452: Pivot, Payoff, and the Geometry of Story – Interview with Steven James appeared first on DIY MFA.

If there is such a thing as a golden rule in the writing of fiction, it is that you must keep the reader engaged. A “likable” main character or at the very least a relatable one? Story beats? Genre tropes and conventions or the clever subversion of them? Exposition to help the reader understand and navigate the rules of the world before launching into the central conflict or none at all? All that is window dressing if your reader becomes bored and puts down the book.

To be clear, I am not saying you should toss out all the guidelines, craft notes, and plotting advice you have collected up to this point. What I am saying is that it is okay if your draft doesn’t fit neatly into a three or five-act structure, Save the Cat beat sheet, or other recognized model. It is okay to break a rule or two to serve your story. But the last thing you want to do is waste your reader’s time. You need to keep them engaged.

A Caveat on Subjectivity and “Rules”

With rule-breaking in mind, please take the advice that follows with a grain of salt. I am, after all, just one individual with a particular, sometimes arbitrary set of tastes that will likely change and evolve over time. 

Consider and adopt whichever recommendations work for you, and try not to worry about the rest.

Keep Your Reader Engaged

So if the only rule is to engage the reader, how do you accomplish it? If I’m working on a story that, despite my best efforts, refuses to position itself neatly into a recognizable story shape, I use the following three goals to frame my writing and rewriting process.

1. Be Brief. 
2. Be Specific. 
3. Be Gorgeous.

Brevity

If you are reading this, you probably already recognize the value of brevity in writing. We are counseled by peers, mentors, and editors to ensure each word or sentence serves a purpose and justifies its inclusion in the final draft. There is no surer way to tire your reader than to clutter your manuscript with pages of unnecessary information or passages overburdened with unintentionally pedantic prose.

Do I always love the ruthless cutting and paring involved in the writing process? No, but in doing so, I almost always improve a piece. The pressure of a shorter word limit often forces me to tighten a story’s pacing, momentum, and escalation, clarify its through-line, and craft a stronger ending.

As you revise your next manuscript, I encourage you to ask these questions. Does each line/paragraph/scene move the action forward? Does it add new or key information? Does the piece function or have the same effect without it?

Specificity

For me, specificity is the key to believable, memorable characters who readers care enough about to follow to the last word of a piece. Tell me your main character works in a restaurant, and I might be interested enough to keep reading. Give me the ache in her knees and lower back at hour five of her shift, the flutter of panic in her chest at the start of the lunch rush, the smell of drip coffee hissing on the burner, how her hands move as she anxiously checks and re-checks that her apron ties are smoothed flat against her waist, and I will begin to see her as real. I might even begin to understand her perspective of the world, and I will definitely be engaged enough to keep reading.

It can be tempting, especially when wrestling with a big question or timely message in your work, to widen the scope of a piece. Specificity can keep such work from verging on the strictly didactic and keep your reader engaged throughout. Ground your work in the precise, intimate, partial, flawed, and ultimately human experience of a character and you allow the reader to enter the story, to feel the consequences of larger events on a deeply personal level.

Gorgeous Prose

This final aim to be gorgeous, comes from the sublime Ursula K. Le Guin and an exercise in her influential work Steering the Craft. 

There are times I become so preoccupied with addressing technical or plot-related aspects of a piece that I lose sight of the primary reason I write. And what am I here for, if not in part for the sheer joy of working with language? The truth is too that readers respond to beautifully crafted work that evokes emotion. There’s a reason most of us don’t read technical manuals cover to cover for entertainment.

So write with flair and for pleasure. Manipulate rhythm, repetition, and the musicality of language. Delight in the sound of your sentences. Be beautiful and irresistible, constructing sentences that make apathy impossible for your readers. Write the great, true, gorgeous sentences that speak to both your writer’s and reader’s heart.

A Final Prompt

Write a short but complete story in which some sort of secret is revealed. This secret can be anything from the quotidian (an extra box of holiday chocolate hidden from the children in the back of a cupboard) to the surreal (an intergalactic conspiracy to conceal the formula of a serum that grants immortality).

Aim for between 500 and 1200 words. Be brief, but specific, and of course, gorgeous.

The elder daughter of Korean-Canadian and Austrian immigrants, F.E. Choe currently lives in Columbia, South Carolina. When she is not at her desk trying to craft true and beautiful sentences or piecing together her latest short story, you will find her feeding the dog scraps under the table, reading, or training her backyard flock of hens to walk backwards. Follow her on Instagram @f.e.choe.

The post Be Brief. Be Specific. Be Gorgeous. appeared first on DIY MFA.

Read on for this fantastic interview!

About Amy Wallen

Amy Wallen is the author of How To Write a Novel in 20 Pies: Sweet and Savory Tips for the Writing Life, the Los Angeles Times bestselling novel MoonPies and Movie Stars, and the memoir When We Were Ghouls: A Memoir of Ghost Stories. 

As writer-in-residence at Ocean Discovery Institute, Amy teaches personal storytelling to young people traditionally excluded from science due to race, income status, and educational opportunity. She also facilitates and co-teaches manuscript workshops in San Diego and France (at which she serves pie). For several years, Amy was associate director at the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and a novel writing instructor at UCSD and UCLA Extensions. 

She is also the creator of Savory Salons—literary salons with pie—a day of discourse with successful authors on the writing life, and the founder of DimeStories—three-minute stories told by the author and featured on NPR.

You can follow Amy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

About How to Write a Novel in 20 Pies

Providing comfort food and inspiration for the aspiring novelist, How To Write a Novel in 20 Pies offers novelist and writing coach Amy Wallen’s insider secrets on living the writing life. Filled with chapters about writing, revising, submitting to an agent, and book promotion, this book combines Wallen’s experienced writing advice with the brilliant illustrations of Emil Wilson, including recipes for literary success and the full recipes for 20 sweet and savory pies.

As a novelist, memoirist, and associate director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute, Amy Wallen has a few things to say about the writing world, many of them irreverent and snarky. From her perspective as a teacher, mentor, and published author, her belief is that the way to survive the hard knocks of writing a book and trying to get published is to bust a gut working, laughing, and eating pie.

With chapters including “Oh Agent, Where Art Thou?”, “Revising, Rewriting, and Reimagining,” and “The Joy of Rejection,” Wallen balances out the challenging stages of the writing process with both sweet and savory goodness, featuring recipes for chocolate pecan pie, salmon and portobello pie, and the recipe for the best cherry pie ever.

Throughout the book, Wallen demystifies the vagaries of the publishing business, providing delicious recipes that will keep your belly full even when you’re staring at an empty page. Her writing advice is neatly paired with the brilliant illustrations of Emil Wilson, who shares her sharp wit, sardonic look at the demands of the writing life, and her mad love of pie. Combined, the stories, lessons, images, and recipes will provide encouragement and camaraderie for the novel-writing journey, from putting pen to page, to finding an agent, to celebrating publication—all with a piece of pie.

Interview with Amy Wallen

Lori Walker: First of all, I’d love to hear more about your journey to becoming a writer. How did you get your start? What was that magical moment you knew?

Amy Wallen: So many authors answer the same, but I’ve always written stories. When I was a child my family traveled around the world living in places like the Southern US, Africa, and South America. 

My first “book” was “self-published” (Scotch tape and Big Chief perforated tablet pages) when, at the age of 7, I wrote a few lines about each place we had lived, and I drew a picture of each place. Colored pencil was my medium. I suppose that was my first illustrated book. When I was 12, I wrote a book of short stories collected in a Snoopy spiral notebook for my brother for Christmas one year. 

But my start came later when I was asked to be a member of Janet Fitch’s writing group. For four years I drove to Los Angeles every two weeks for her read & critique group. She was one of my toughest and best teachers who I felt gave me the answers to all the questions about writing that I didn’t know I had. 

The magical moment when I knew I was truly a writer was when my first novel was published and when someone asked me how it felt, out of my mouth came, “I feel legitimate.” 

LW: You’ve written a novel. You’ve written a memoir. Now a craft book. Can you tell me a bit about why you’ve chosen to write in so many genres and how you pull it off?

AW: I’m not sure any of my books were a choice. I don’t mean to get woo-woo about the process, but each book happened by happenstance. 

The novel started when I was doing morning pages. I mostly journaled and one day was tired of complaining and meandering on and on about my woes. I was tired of listening to myself, so I took a character who I had created a few weeks before in a workshop and let her write my morning pages. And off we went. She started telling me her story, which I thought was going to be a short story, and 300 pages later was a novel. I’ve always thought of Ruby as the writer, and I was just the typist. 

My memoir happened because I went to grad school so I could get those letters after my name in order to get a teaching job. Since I had a novel published I decided I would study creative nonfiction instead and hone my ability to write essays. A lot like my first novel, I had one essay I was working on and 300 pages later it became my creative thesis and then my published memoir. Maybe I just don’t know when to put my pen down. 

This third book came to me while standing in front of my novel writing classes. All the students sit looking up at me as though I have the secrets to writing a novel. I figured that’s why they signed up for the class, so I wanted to share all my secrets. I took my class curriculum and personal stories I share in all my classes and put them together to encourage all writers that the secret is persevering. 

Writing my books and seeing them published has been living my dream. And, I wanted to help my students and other writers to live their own dreams. 

How did I pull off writing three different genres? I guess I pulled a Nike and Just Did It. I didn’t think about the fact that I was writing different genres until I got to the other side of them. I just keep writing what wants to come out. I just write. 

LW: What does a typical day of writing look like for you?

AW: Every day seems to be different. I love editing and revising as much as I love creating a new story, so when a story grabs me I can be at my seat for hours. But when the book throws up an obstacle, I find myself up and about more. I walk my dog more than she wants to go out, I ride my bike on every errand I can think of, and I make more pies. 

Sometimes, yes, this can be procrastination, but usually for me, it’s when I’m percolating ideas. I don’t walk with anyone but my dog because she doesn’t interrupt my thoughts, I don’t ride my bike with anyone else in tow, and making pies is pretty solitary, except for the eating part. 

Then, when I’ve got the book at a place where it needs polish and shine, I am at my desk for hours at a time again, and my bike tires go flat, my dog whines to go out, and my husband loses his pie belly. 

A typical day of writing starts first thing in the morning. Post-dog walk, I take a big jug of water and climb the stairs to my attic office, I open the work-in-progress document, reread the last couple of pages, and set to writing. 

I don’t write an outline, but I do make lots of lists and as my fingers move across the keyboard and my head thinks of what’s to come, I jot down notes of what I don’t want to forget to include. So, my desk is an utter rainbow of sticky notes of all my reminders-to-self. If my typing slows, I’ll scan the notes for what I wanted to make sure to include, and then I include it.   

I feel writing is a 24/7 job. Even when I’m at the grocery store I’m thinking about a story or ideas. 

LW: I love the unique decision to weave a craft book with one of the timeless procrastination methods, baking. I think for nonfiction writing, be it memoir, essay, or even this craft book, coming up with the structure can be difficult. Can you talk about how you came up with the structure?

AW: Procrastibaking. That’s the term I’ve heard a lot. I love the word, but not sure I believe procrastination is what I am always doing. I could very well be lying to myself, and it wouldn’t be the first time. But, I consider cleaning out my fridge as procrastinating, and pie baking is more of a meditation for me. It’s where my mind settles and I can revisit something that, prior to baking, I couldn’t figure out for the story. 

A lot of people, Mark Twain for one, and me, go for walks to let the story percolate or simmer, or what it feels like to me is that the scenes settle. Baking is where my ideas can finally settle rather than floating around inside my head not knowing where to fall. It’s like I leave my desk, and my ideas can find a seat as the music of musical chairs stops. But pie is twofold because it is also comfort food. 

Yes, structure can often be one of the hardest parts of writing a book-length manuscript. I think memoir may be the hardest to figure that out, but maybe that’s my own experience, or maybe the nature of the beast since it can be hard to determine what sets the story off on its trajectory, because it’s the specific story and situation we want to read/write about, not the chronology of the life (that would be autobiography). 

So, where does this story begin and/or end is a common question when writing memoir. Obviously, the author hasn’t died, so the life hasn’t ended but the story to be told needs to have an ending. That’s a part of the examination of what the writer wants and needs to tell. My memoir started in the middle and the story fanned out from there, but it took me a few drafts to figure that out. 

For this most recent book I naturally felt it should be structured in the order it takes to have an idea, write a solid book, find an agent, get a publishing deal, and have a book out in the world. Each of those require consistent persistence, and I wanted to help writers to keep going no matter how long it seems it takes to realize their aspirations and achievement of each of those steps. 

Of course, the order of the pies was another structure that had to lie parallel to the narrative about writing and publishing. The recipes and the personal essays that go with each recipe have an overall arc as well. The theme of the book is perseverance, and the recipes build in momentum and difficulty. I wouldn’t say any are difficult, but they do get fancier, because after all don’t each of the steps toward finishing and publishing deserve celebration pies?

LW: So, your title says “How to Write a Novel,” but you also include advice on writing memoir in this book. What are some of the similarities and differences between fiction and memoir?

AW: Yes, the title, like the rest of the book, is irreverent. The book tackles all types of creative writing, and it focuses on how to pursue the writing life. 

There are many differences and similarities between memoir and novels, but I’ll share a couple of my own personal experiences when switching genres from novel writing to memoir. 

One similarity in fiction and nonfiction is both have a main character in a particular situation, which sets the character off on a journey. All characters have wants and needs. 

One area where the two genres differ is the main character in a memoir has two voices—voice of experience and voice of innocence. The voice of experience is telling the story. The voice of innocence is to whom the story is happening. 

As a novelist, this was hard for me to get my head around. I could hear the little girl telling the story, me as a child. But I couldn’t figure out how to bring out the older, more experienced me examining the situation from a distance, from experience. 

It took me reading many memoirs and examining how others had done it, and the description in Fearless Confessions by Sue William Silverman. It wasn’t that I didn’t already analyze and think about my childhood and have an adult perspective, the difficulty for me was seamlessly allowing both voices to exist side-by-side in a scene on the same page. 

In fiction, this had always been a shift in point of view and worked either inside the point of view character, or from a more distant perspective within the same point of view. Eventually, it clicked for me, and I was able to not just tell the story of my peripatetic childhood, but could reveal how it made me who I was and who I am. 

Both genres need conflict, tension, suspense. And, both genres require the writer to use their imagination. Memoir is not just the transcript of a recording of your life. Memoir is a litany of memories, but memories come from our imagination and the “creative” part of creative nonfiction is how to put the story together, how the story develops. This is true of fiction as well. 

As mentioned above, the structure of a memoir, as in fiction, plays an important part. In fiction, this same building of the story is done by fully understanding the motivations of the characters. So, in some ways that’s what a fiction writer does as well—examines the whole of the character—how they got to be who they are now.

The best writing is when none of these building blocks and character developments are seen. We can just read the story and not think about whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, just that it’s a story that transports us to another experience by another human being.  

LW: How do you know when a nugget of an idea has the legs to become a full-fledged book or story? What is your process for getting it there?

AW: If a character in a story has much more to reveal than just what happens in one short story, then the writer should keep going. Every character has a want and a need. When these are resolved, then that’s when the story is complete. One story may turn into a novel because there is more to what the character needs to learn. 

If it’s just an idea about where a story might go, writers have different ways of testing it out. Some sit down and write it and see where it takes them. This is me—I write from the seat of my pants. Curiosity keeps me digging. If I am not curious after a few pages, I know the idea won’t intrigue anyone else. 

Others prepare an outline. This is a great way to see if the story can be plotted out. My third book was sold on proposal, so I wrote it after I got a book deal. But the chapter outline I wrote to sell the book were all chapters I was certain I could solve for X. I felt confident the trajectory had a beginning, middle, and THE END.

LW: What is one of the biggest mistakes that you see beginning writers make and how can they avoid it?

AW: Not writing from their gut. I’ve seen too many writers try to follow what they think is supposed to be done instead of reminding themselves of their own hopes and desires for the story. I’ve seen too many writers try to follow everything their writing group or early readers tell them to do. They end up confused about what they even meant the story to be in the first place. 

On the other hand, some writers only listen to their ego and don’t take any advice, and this also gets them no place but a book that is about one thing with very little depth. 

To sum up, beginning writers would do best if they took in advice, considered the source, their original intention, and how the two mesh. Can that scene that the group said to get rid of be rewritten from a different perspective? There’s a reason it was written in the first place. But listen to your gut. If it feels right to let it go, then hit Delete. 

LW: I want to know all about the illustrations! Why did you decide to use illustrations? What was the process of working with an illustrator like? How much creative control did you have? How did you collaborate with Emil Wilson on the artwork?

AW: I always saw this book as illustrated with whimsical characters. My friend Emil is mentioned in the book as a friend in our Janet Fitch group. We are both pie bakers and I knew his illustrations, so I reached out to him to see if he would be interested in collaborating. He was very much interested. I already knew our senses of humor connected, so that was no issue. 

I sent him my proposal and because he is an art director in advertising he was able to help put together one of the most top-notch proposals. My idea and narrative, along with his whimsy, set off to the agents and publishers hand in hand. 

As far as creative control, I wrote and he drew. I handed him what I had written and he always came up with something I loved. We meshed well. It was a partnership in creativity. 

I learned later that most writers have an illustrator assigned to them, but that wasn’t the case with this book, so I guess I was very lucky to know Emil would be a good fit.

LW: A lot of authors are creating playlists to accompany their books, but this being a reading column, I’d like to know what your “reading playlist” is. I know How to Write a Novel in 20 Pies is a craft book, so maybe what are some of the top books that you recommend to people?

AW: The first song I would want to go with this book is “I Can See Clearly Now” because this is a book on perseverance, on how to keep pushing through all the obstacles, riding over bumps, and going around detours in the writing life, from putting your pie butt in the chair all the way through to publication, and hopefully, by the end, the reader can see their path and at least know they can return to the book for more pushes and nudges and pie, that I’m there for them when the going gets tough.  

But you didn’t ask for songs, you asked for books. 

For me, what got my foot tapping was Annie Lamott’s Bird by Bird. I got up and started to dance when I read Ralph Keyes’ The Courage to Write. 

To help my novel-writing students learn to boogie, I teach them the basic steps with The Plot Thickens by Noah Lukeman. 

But to really jive and get down, we do exercises in What If? edited by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter. We rock out and go deep inside our writing with Naming the World edited by Bret Anthony Johnston. 

For any wallflowers who come to my creative writing workshops, we work on stepping out with Now Write! books, both the fiction and nonfiction editions, edited by Sherry Ellis. 

Sue Silverman’s Fearless Confessions answered many questions for me about the voice of innocence vs voice of experience when writing my memoir, and it’s a wonderful waltz through the corridors of revealing truth and finding metaphor and beauty in moments of life. 

I also believe that one of the best dance partners to have is other books, not just how-to, but being the apprentice to the author of books one loves. The best way to learn the steps is to take the arms of someone else and follow what they do. Then learn how to lead. 

I love quirky off beat stories, and some of my all-time favorites that inspired my own were Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Greeley, and Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, and Claire DeWitt’s crime novels as I’m working on my next novel which is about a menopausal Nancy Drew, so I’m trying to figure out the crime/mystery drama. Here I go working on a whole new genre again, a whole new melody.

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. She is also the producer and co-host of DIY MFA Radio and editor-in-chief of DIYMFA.com, among other roles. Lori is a copyeditor for Amanda Filippelli and collaborating fellow for The Poetry Lab. She writes personal essays and memoir in Tulsa, where she lives with her husband and cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: Interview with Amy Wallen appeared first on DIY MFA.

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 recaps of the most recent episodes, a curated Listening List of episodes on a particular theme, and other fun goodies we only share via email. Best of all, it’s free to join! The theme for July is Thrillers, and you can become an insider by signing up with your email at diymfa.com/insiders.

In this episode Alexis Schaitkin and I discuss:

• Writing a story with mystery as a central premise without focusing on solving that mystery.
• Creating a fable-like feeling through the intentional use of tropes.
• The nature of community and isolation and how it relates to writing.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Alexis Schaitkin

Alexis Schaitkin is the author of Saint X and her short stories and essays have appeared in Ecotone, Southwest Review, The Southern Review, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Her fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She received her MFA in fiction from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband and their two children.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Twitter.

Elsewhere

Richly emotive and darkly captivating, with elements of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and the imaginative depth of Margaret Atwood, Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin conjures a community in which girls become wives, wives become mothers and some of them, quite simply, disappear.  

Vera grows up in a small town, removed and isolated, pressed up against the mountains, cloud-covered and damp year-round. This town, fiercely protective, brutal and unforgiving in its adherence to tradition, faces a singular affliction: some mothers vanish, disappearing into the clouds. It is the exquisite pain and intrinsic beauty of their lives; it sets them apart from people elsewhere and gives them meaning.

Vera, a young girl when her own mother went, is on the cusp of adulthood herself. As her peers begin to marry and become mothers, they speculate about who might be the first to go, each wondering about her own fate. Reveling in their gossip, they witness each other in motherhood, waiting for signs: this one devotes herself to her child too much, this one not enough—that must surely draw the affliction’s gaze. When motherhood comes for Vera, she is faced with the question: will she be able to stay and mother her beloved child, or will she disappear?

Provocative and hypnotic, Alexis Schaitkin’s Elsewhere is at once a spellbinding revelation and a rumination on the mysterious task of motherhood and all the ways in which a woman can lose herself to it; the self-monitoring and judgment, the doubts and unknowns, and the legacy she leaves behind.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 417

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 417: Setting the Tone for Your Novel Through Voice, Mood, and Point of View – Interview with Alexis Schaitkin appeared first on DIY MFA.

In part, this meant that while I (mostly) used the town’s real history and geography, every person and business in the book is invented. But it also meant that I wanted to approach the town as I would the book’s characters, giving it the kind of story arc and shades of personality that readers expect from the human characters.

Too often, settings end up being just that: a sort of stage set on which the characters carry out the action of the novel. I wanted the Mill Valley of my novel to be much more than that. 

Here are a few principles I found useful as I worked to make that goal a reality.

1. Do your research

To write well about your characters, you have to know them intimately, and the same goes for a place. 

When I went back to Mill Valley to see family, I made a point of visiting places I knew would show up in the book—my old Little League baseball field, the town’s central plaza universally known as “the Bricks,” the crumbling World War II-era coastal artillery bunkers where we used to party when I was a kid. 

At each site, I took notes on what I saw and heard and smelled, as well as about who was there and what they were doing. More than once, my observations found their way directly into the book.

I also did a fair bit of research into the history of Mill Valley and the surrounding Marin County. The internet is great for this. I found old maps that showed the area in the early years of Spanish settlement before California became a state and read amateur histories of the area running from the arrival of the Coast Miwok people, through the years of the Spanish settlement, and right up to the waves of people brought by the Golden Gate Bridge and World War II. 

This helped me create a “backstory” for the town, which, in turn, made it easier for me to build a compelling dramatic arc for it.

2. Give your setting a dramatic story arc

In a novel, a “flat” character always stays the same, while a “rounded” character changes over the course of the story in a compelling way. The same holds true, I’ve come to believe, for settings. 

We all write plenty of “flat” settings—a bar where two characters meet, a courtroom where a trial takes place, etc.—but I wanted the town at the heart of Blithedale Canyon to have a story arc just like ones I gave to the book’s main characters. And, just as with a human character, that meant something vital needed to be at stake for the town and the action of the novel needed to put those stakes at risk.

For the Mill Valley of Blithedale Canyon what’s at stake is the question of what kind of town it’s going to be. In the novel, the generation of small-business owners who made the town is dying off, replaced by fabulously wealthy entrepreneurs and tech gurus. The family of Trent Wolfer, the novel’s narrator, owned a shoe store where his granddad repaired shoes in the back. Nearby malls killed off that business, and now, as Trent says at one point, “All the old stores are gone. There’s nothing left in town but chain stores and art galleries.” Trent takes a job at a locally owned grocery store where the son of the owner is trying to harness the power of the web to out-compete a high-end national chain and keep the business in his family. This battle for the town’s identity becomes an important secondary plot for the book.

3. The setting’s story arc has to connect to the central plot of the novel

It’s all well and good to offer your readers a storyline for your setting, but if it doesn’t connect in a meaningful way to the book’s plot, readers will wonder why it’s there. 

In Blithedale Canyon, the central plot is a love story. Trent is a drug addict and alcoholic who moves back to his hometown to live with his mother and her tech-millionaire second husband after narrowly avoiding a long jail sentence for defrauding the owner of a liquor store in Santa Barbara.

On the surface, Trent would seem the last person on Earth to care about Mill Valley’s small-town feel. But his grandparents’ shoe store was a haven from the chaos of his childhood, and he wants more than anything for the world to return to the one he knew then. So, almost in spite of himself, he throws himself into the mission of saving the grocery store, thinking that if he can make that work, he can make all the other dysfunctional parts of his life work as well. 

In this way, his story arc and the story arc of the book’s setting are joined as one.

4. Grant your setting the subtle shadings of character you would grant a central human figure

Readers are drawn to complexity of character, especially when that complexity leads to surprises and insights. 

In my case, it would have been easy to take potshots at Mill Valley, with its stratospheric wealth and its culture of sun-glazed self-regard. And I did take my shots. Early on, Trent rails at how the town has “become an upscale theme park of itself, the bus depot made over into a trendy bookstore, the old head shop into an art gallery, the pharmacy into a doggie daycare, everything everywhere cleaned up and prettified for the tourists on their way to Muir Woods and the ocean beaches.”

But I also wanted to show the side of the town those tourists might miss. Because he’s local, Trent goes places few visitors will ever see and the people he meets there belong to a tight-knit community largely invisible to people passing through. 

I wanted to be true to both sides of the town’s character, the rich, self-satisfied, Teslas-and-aromatherapy side, and the one inhabited by ordinary working people barely hanging on in a place that has become increasingly inhospitable to them.

5. Your other characters must relate to your setting as they would a human character

It’s not enough that you view your setting as a fully realized character; your other characters have to see it the same way, or else the reader never will. 

Each of the main characters in Blithedale Canyon have a particularized relationship with the town they live in. For Trent’s wealthy stepdad, a hippie turned tech entrepreneur, it’s the canvas on which he’s painted the masterpiece of his own life. For Suze Randall, the woman Trent loves, who has moved back home with her two kids, the town is a perilous ladder out of the hole she’s dug herself with a disastrous marriage. And for Trent, it’s his last, best chance to make a home for himself after he’s failed everywhere else.

The point is the setting of your novel should never be static, never simply be the place where the events of the plots happen. 

Just like a real place, it should show a different face to every person who lives there. And just like a real place, it should be in constant flux, ever at risk of losing its way or rising to meet its potential.

Tell us in the comments: What are your favorite books that make the setting a character?

Michael Bourne is a contributing editor at Poets & Writers Magazine and a staff writer for The Millions. He has written for The New York Times, The Economist, Literary Hub and Salon, and his fiction has appeared in more than a dozen literary magazines including december, The Southampton Review, and Tin House. Raised in Northern California, he now lives in Vancouver, Canada, with his wife and son. Blithedale Canyon is his first novel. You can order it on Amazon, Bookshop, or Regal House.

You can find Michael on his website or follow him on Twitter and Goodreads.

The post #5onFri: ​​Five Ways to Turn Your Novel’s Setting into a Fully Realized Character appeared first on DIY MFA.

When the events of the day thwart us so that the only addition to our writing is the intent to have written, frustration, sadness, and anger can morph into the Guilt Monster.

Oh, the Guilt Monster with its innumerable phalanges, each tipped with a talon designed to perfectly press your particular buttons.

The Guilt Monster plays us like a piano. It says, “You should have taken the trash out last night, should be walking the dog first thing in the morning instead of writing, should be getting up even earlier or shifting your writing time to after midnight because don’t you want to be a writer? If you really wanted to be a writer, you would write no matter the exhaustion and the desire to spend time with your family and the need to go to work to support that family.”

Right?

Wrong.

Just because you miss one day’s (or a week or a month or however much) worth of writing doesn’t mean you can’t be a writer or that you aren’t a “real” writer.

How Do You Feel Guilty?

In the past, the Guilt Monster hung around and made me feel bad all the time. The worst was the idea that if I wasn’t putting all available time and effort into writing what I thought I should be writing when I thought I should be writing it, I didn’t have the dedication to be a writer. I didn’t love writing the way I thought I did.

So, I felt guilty for not writing and guilty for not waking up at some god-awful time in the morning to write and guilty for spending all this time loving writing and not putting any time or effort into the process.

Oh yeah. It’s like curling up in a warm blanket and discovering it was only warm because someone peed on it and that person was you, and now you are wrapped in a cold, wet, smelly rag.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm!

Now, it’s time to escape from the Guilt Monster faster than you would flail your way out of that rag.

Here’s the secret: You get to use your body and mind and spirit to write. By identifying and accepting what is true about you, you can figure out how to make it happen.

Let me explain.

At one point, I decided that I needed to get up at 4:30 am and write. I’d read blog posts, articles, and books by people who had done this and achieved all sorts of amazing things. Also, it was the time of day I could get a large block of writing done (I’d decided I needed to write for two hours each day) before I went to work.

Also, I was in my late forties, which was when my genetics switched over and turned me into a morning robin instead of a night owl, so I was pretty confident I could make it happen.

The first day, I woke up at 4:30 am—no alarm necessary! I trotted back to my writing space and wrote for my two hours. Then, I repeated this process for a few days in a row.

As the days plodded on, I grew nauseous, developed headaches, and exhaustion destroyed my focus by noon. I pushed through my day job and collapsed upon arriving home. Dinner? What dinner? How about frozen pizza again?

This schedule could not continue.

The Guilt Monster showed up with his teeth bared.

How could I consider myself a writer if I didn’t break my body to make it happen? How could I have wasted all this time on my writing when I wasn’t even dedicated enough to sacrifice my entire being to the cause? What had I done to my family by trying to be a writer?

Yeah. The Guilt Monster played the LA Sonata with all of its arpeggios.

Defeating the Guilt Monster

Begin by knowing this: that guilt you’re feeling? It’s normal. Natural. Bring your tray over here and have lunch with us at the writer’s table!

Let’s talk about comparing ourselves to others. We all do it. Looking at someone else and their writing process is a great way to get ideas for ourselves. However, it’s important to remember that those people who state with authority that “You MUST Do This to Be a Writer” are only telling you what worked for THEM.

They don’t know you. They’ve never met you.

You are the only person who knows what works for you.

In my case, those people didn’t know that my body and mind needed to stay in bed until at least 6:00 am. They didn’t know that my entire being would rebel and put me in a sickbed for days when I attempted waking up at 4:30 am.

And that was okay. Getting up that early could work for them.

It didn’t work for ME.

After spending time in the hellhole of my “I’m not good enough” guilt, I realized, even though getting up super early didn’t work for me, that didn’t mean I wasn’t a dedicated writer. That just meant getting up super early didn’t work for me.

Just. That.

And I didn’t have to do it. I could try something else.

I began experimenting with my process, finding the time and space and environment I needed to make my writing happen. To discover what worked for MY fingers to get the words on the page.

Any websites or blog posts or articles or books that proclaimed their way of writing was the best and only way? Out with the trash, baby! The comparison shop was closed.

Listen to Yourself

The best way to find what works for you is to listen to your body, your mind, and your heart. To get quiet, spend some time thinking deeply and differently about your process, and consider these questions.

Have I done anything before that might work here? If not, can I imagine something that might work? That could help me write regularly?

And when that idea bubbles up in your mind, try it. Even if ten thousand people are screaming at you that it won’t work, why not just give it a try? Look at that crowd and say, “So what? I’m doing it anyway.”

Even if it doesn’t work, at least you’re taking action. And that action quiets the static in your brain thinking, “I’ll never be a good writer because I can’t make (fill in your particular guilt trip here) work.”

That static goes away, and what remains is the time and space to do the work that you want to be doing.

Yep. Taking action silences the Guilt Monster. For the most part.

Walking away from the Guilt Monster doesn’t happen overnight. It still shows up, looming over you with familiar refrains. But the words stacking up on the page, chapters forming, stories being written, all of these help you give the Guilt Monster’s talons a needed manicure and make it harder for it to play the instrument that is you.

***This post uses Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching Tools.

Tell us in the comments: What actions do you take to defeat the Guilt Monster?

LA (as in tra-la-la) Bourgeois empowers you to embrace JOY as you manifest your creative goals through her Creativity and Business Coaching. Battle resistance, procrastination, and overwhelm with her at your side, gently encouraging with humor and heart. Discover more at her website, labourgeois.biz

The post Battling the Guilt Monster appeared first on DIY MFA.

One of my favorites is attributed to the 30th President of the U.S., Calvin Coolidge. The gist of it is that nothing in the world can take the place of persistence—not talent, not genius, not education. The quote ends with: “Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” 

His words may have been written in the early 20th century, more than one hundred years ago, but are still valid, especially for writers. 

The tips I outline below grew out of Coolidge’s philosophy.

1. Welcome rejection. 

I’ve read about “clubs” among writers in which they challenge colleagues to aim for 100 rejections from publications during a single calendar year. 

Although I don’t officially belong to any of these groups, I also strive for 100 rejections. 

This isn’t to say that I submit haphazardly to any and all publications, throw pasta on the wall to see what sticks. I do my research and determine which journals and/or publications might be a good fit for my essays, stories, essay collections, or book chapters, and then act accordingly. And of course, I thoroughly review and edit my writing before I submit it. 

But I don’t let the fear of rejection hold me back when deciding when/where/how many pieces to submit. 

I take risks. 

I believe that if you only submit a dozen or so times a year, each rejection is that much more painful, and carries that much more weight. That’s not to say that I look forward to rejections, but I’m not devastated when one arrives in my email queue (or via snail mail) because I have other pieces out in the world that I’m equally proud of. 

Following a rejection, I then make a note of the journal in question, as well as the submission that was rejected. If an editor had any constructive comments, I make note of those also, and thank him or her. I may review my submission yet again at that point to make sure I didn’t miss any inconsistencies or errors. 

My point, though, is that it’s not the end of the world when I receive a rejection since I’ve sent out a healthy number; that way each submission isn’t quite so precious.

2. Ignore unkind comments. 

Once in a long long while, I’ll receive a rejection that seems personal, even though submissions are anonymous. Maybe they’re tired of reading about COVID, or dysfunctional families, or the plight of single parents, etc. Something strikes a discordant note, and a journal staffer might have harsh words for me, the writer. 

Again, this is very rare, but when it happens I try to take it in stride and, ideally, tell myself that the editor or reader was just having a bad day when she wrote that “any idiot knows such and such” about one of the sentences in my piece. Or maybe he/she was just sick of whatever the topic of my essay or story was. 

Lastly, maybe there was a kernel of truth in the criticism, once I excavate it from the sender’s harshness; I look for that kernel.

3. Don’t be in a hurry. 

I once submitted an essay to a publication and they accepted it a year after I submitted it. I don’t know if it was lost in the slush pile and then rescued by a new editor, or if they reevaluated its merit. I didn’t ask, and was just happy they wanted to publish it. 

In all the cases I’m familiar with, journals are run by hard-working volunteer staff and, even if they are paid, it’s not much, so I try to adopt an attitude of gratitude and patience while waiting to hear back about my submissions.

4. Don’t obsess about your age (especially if you’re a certain age). 

I’m a Baby Boomer and some (thankfully, not all) people erroneously think that those of us past a certain age should be otherwise engaged: sitting in rocking chairs, knitting booties, watching television nonstop, having lunch out with friends regularly, frittering away our days on mindless activities. 

Fortunately, it’s a rare attitude, but it does happen. 

Regardless, that’s not me. That will never be me. I have a husband, children, and grandchildren I adore, and hobbies I enjoy, but I also am a full-time writer. 

A corollary to this rule is that those who think you need decades under your belt to reach a certain level in a career—say, writing—are mistaken. Do what you want with your life while you can; spend your time doing what you enjoy. 

For me, writing is one of those things. In my case, I had a fulfilling and long career as a translator and linguist, working with more than a dozen languages, and traveling all over the world, but I always wanted to be a writer, too, and did it unofficially for decades. But, when the time was right, writing became my principal vocation. 

My point is that only you know your background, and only you can decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.

5. Don’t automatically expect your work to be received with constant or far-reaching accolades, but always work towards that goal. 

Your hard work, waiting, and persistence might not yield the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award, but hopefully, that’s not the reason you write. 

Another of my favorite quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson sums it up: “The reward of a job well done is to have done it.” 

Usually, that’s enough impetus for me. I have essays I’ve worked on for hours, days, months, and they’re languishing in my drawer (or on my computer), not yet picked up by anyone for publication. But I know in my heart they’re good. I view them as my foster children; they have so many wonderful traits and I just have to keep trying to find the right home for them. In the meantime, they haven’t lost their luster just because the New York Times isn’t knocking down my door to publish them.

The bottom line for me continues to be: “If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Or, to quote the rallying cry adopted by feminists in 2017 after Mitch McConnell used it to describe Senator Elizabeth Warren’s unwillingness to be silenced: “Nevertheless, she persisted.” I know I wouldn’t have accomplished half of what I’ve achieved—in writing and with other lifetime endeavors—if I hadn’t been persistent.

Tell us in the comments: What words of encouragement help you?

Linda Murphy Marshall is a multi-linguist and writer with a PhD in Hispanic languages and literature, a master’s in Spanish, and an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Maryland Literary Review, the Ocotillo Review, Chestnut Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bacopa Literary Review, PopMatters, Storgy [UK], The Bark Magazine, Catamaran Literary Reader, and Critical Read. She was featured in American Writers Review, where she was an Honorable Mention for the 2019 Fiction Contest. She was long-listed in Strands Publishers’s 2021 International Flash Fiction Contest, and was a finalist in the 2020 Annual Adelaide Literary Contest for one of her essays. In addition, she is currently a reader for Fourth Genre and a translation editor for the Los Angeles Review. Her sketches and paintings have been featured in art shows and galleries. She lives in Columbia, MD.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook.

The post #5onFri: Five Words of Encouragement for Writers appeared first on DIY MFA.