Tweet The question that comes a lot as you write is whether what you have is ready to be published, submitted and posted. How do you know when your piece is fully baked? Sometimes you don’t know until you send it off and realized in excitement you sent it off prematurely. Sometimes you wait too long until you’ve poked and prodded it so much that what you have is a shriveled shell of the original manuscript. This quick writing tip helps me in the words of Kenny Rogers: “know when to hold ’em Know when to fold ’em” It’s also…
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Tweet These two books are taking real estate on my nightstand. After finding so many gems, I wondered how I could have possibly grown as a fiction and nonfiction writer without it. If you’re looking for fresh reads to give you a new perspective on your writing, you might want to add these to your reading list. Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write with Confidence by William Kenower If you want to grow as a writer, at some point you’re going to need to get deep. This is particularly the case if you’re writing fiction or a personal…
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Tweet I’ve always been a storyteller. I should say, “I’ve always told stories.” This was to the chagrin of my elementary school classmates who hid from me because they couldn’t stand to hear yet another story. You would think this would clue me into my lifelong dream of writing fiction especially when I have a blog all about finding your purpose. But so it is with things that are precious to you. You build walls around it as you get older so no one can touch it. As I began taking writing courses to fulfill my degree in English literature,…
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Tweet I’ve devoted a decade to nonfiction writing, but my love for reading and writing began with fiction. This is the first of what I hope will be many posts on the art of fiction writing. And it’s a good one! I’m pretty proud of this girl! I met her when I started my first local writing group and she’s been supportive, and helpful in her advice, feedback and edits. While other members have gone off to complete manuscripts, she is the only one I know who has not only finished a book, but published it in a short amount…
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Tweet Once in awhile, I’ll get an email from a writer curious about the writing life. I thought this was a particularly good one and asked if I could share it here. Here’s her question and my thoughts on how she can build her portfolio while she’s starting out and what’s really blocking her from writing success. Q: I’m a novice writer and I found your website while I was looking for examples of good online portfolios. I have the opportunity to have a web designer make a site for me by bartering my husbands services but I have no…
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Tweet I doubt any writer is immune to the vulnerability that comes with handing over your work to someone else. It’s a brutal business this writing thing. But it’s part of what you sign up for when you decide to be a writer. Recently, my rejections have dug deep into my heartstrings only because I’m getting closer to work that means a lot to me. I’m no stranger to getting rejected for jobs, articles and essays. In fact, my email inbox is flooded with them. But when you work on something that not only takes up a lot of time (time…
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Tweet I’m going to confess something I’ve never told another soul, except my husband. My entrance into being a columnist for The Writer magazine happened in a weird, kind of embarrassing and surprising way. My gateway wasn’t my writing. It was through cartooning. I’m not a cartoonist, as you can see in the cartoon I submitted below. Here are a few reasons why I think I wasn’t jilted for my lack of obvious talent. The editor at the time was kind and open to receiving cartoon submission from a non-illustrator. I was persistent. In fact, I didn’t stop at that first…
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Tweet It’s been awhile since I posted here. But I reappeared to share something NEW. I got a chance to be on the other part of the interview seat. Here’s a sneak preview.
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Tweet I found about a couple of hundred dollars on my laptop. What I discovered while scrolling through my past documents were raw and unpublished essays, poems, and articles. Some were there because I submitted them once and after a single rejection, completely abandoned it. Others were unfinished. I realized after further inspection that what I had was a treasure trove of potential. Some pieces only required a little TLC in order to become publishable. How about you? Have you taken a look at your old documents lately? Could they been dusted off, reworked, re-envisioned and resubmitted? After spending time looking for different…
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Tweet I haven’t been blogging here lately because I’ve been in a whirlwind of writing. I realized while lying in bed that there is madness to my process. I can drum up ideas quite quickly and when I do, there are a few steps that fuel my inspiration through the hard, stuck, I-can’t-write-another-thing parts. I steal moments to write. Before I had kids, I had all kinds of time to write. But I spent it mostly pretending to write while I lavishly devoured the hours because there were so many of them. These days, I’m usually giving a kid a…