As I write this post in early 2022, I’ve closed out my 2021 Virtual Writers Sabbatical (“VWS”) and started fresh. I mentioned in my Discovering the Art of Book Coaching post in December that my 2022 VWS would include focusing on completing a book coach certification program and starting a book coaching business. I’m at… Read more »
Last summer, on a hectic day before a month-long vacation, I went to the print shop for my final errand. I’d spent the past ten months working on the second draft of my latest novel—submitting chapters to my writing group, fixing the clunky narrative arc, and generally solidifying my sketchy first pass. Now the dogged… Read more »
Hey, y’all. I come before you today, standing at the precipice of possibility. The place where inertia becomes action. The moment where I engage in the act of sitting down and actually writing. This winter, I invested in a masterclass program that walked me through the process of taking an idea, creating a high-level outline,… Read more »
Hello, beautiful people on the internet! Welcome back to Worldly Wise, where together we’re going to take the reins of your speculative fiction story and see it to the finishing line. Last time, we debunked some myths circling the “super genre” that stop writers from diving into the world of speculative fiction and tried a… Read more »
Being a freelance writer can be an empowering career path. You have the opportunity to pursue a creative activity you love while also keeping a schedule suited to your lifestyle. However, as with any business owner, you also have certain responsibilities to your clients. The need to keep clients’ data safe and secure is one… Read more »
As an author of color, I often hear from writers like me that they think their main characters need to be white in order to be widely read. I’ve been a Pitch Wars mentor twice (a mentoring program where an agented/published writer or industry professional picks one writer to work on their manuscript for three… Read more »
However ambitious your literary dreams, achieving them relies on an essential step, one that is solely within your control. You must write. You must do so consistently. Establishing a disciplined writing practice is the most important thing you can do and this post will help you do just that. Landing on a bestseller list, earning… Read more »
Are you struggling to form a writing habit? Do you find yourself saying “I should be writing regularly” but never doing anything about it? You know what? That kind of resistance is totally normal. Resistance invades the artistic process at every level. In fact, resistance is so pervasive that Steven Pressfield wrote a book about… Read more »
Perfectionism is not about being perfect. We tend to think that perfectionists obsess over word choice or comma placement simply because of incredibly high standards, but it goes deeper than that. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown explains, “There’s a significant difference between perfectionism and healthy striving or striving for excellence. Perfectionism… Read more »
If you’ve been following this column, you’ll remember that the previous episode of my journey to becoming a published author ended with me querying a not-quite-ready manuscript—which didn’t go so well—and left me doubting whether I truly have what it takes to be a writer. What you may not realize is that it happened over… Read more »
