by Alice Speilburg
At the pre-publication stage, as you’re drafting queries and sending off sample pages, an editor at a publishing house and a literary agent seem to serve the same purpose: to legitimize your claim as a professional author, and to set you on the path to publication.
by Noah K. Sturdevant
So you went and had a kid (or another one). Congratulations! Now you’re in the special club, where you may need to write to support your little bundle of joy, but don’t have any time to do so.
by Jeff Reynolds
When I was eight, I wrote my first short story. It was bad, as the writing of an eight-year-old tends to be, full of tropes and endless misspellings. It long ago disappeared into the trash bin of my personal history. But my teacher gave me an A on the work, and I was hooked.
News from The Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust: Odyssey has been a pioneer and innovator in holding live online classes since 2010. Live class meetings allow a virtual “physical college classroom” experience, in which students can participate in discussions, ask questions, and learn from an instructor who is responsive, in the moment, to students’ concerns, confusions, […]
by Nathan Nance,
So you’re writing SFF, and you’ve got spaceships to design. Engine systems to map. A haunted forest to populate. A talking badger to draw. If you’re not a rocket scientist writing hard sci-fi, how are you supposed to make your version of James S.A. Corey’s Rocinante, you know, fly?
by Dan Brotzel
Genuine idea theft and plagiarism are complete no-nos, of course. But I’m amazed how protective writers of stories, articles and posts can be about ideas that aren’t really worth stealing. Here are a few thoughts on ideation and originality…
by Paul Jessup
Let’s talk about that early stage of the story, when you have that bright gleaming idea in your head, burning brightly. It wants to be born, it wants to come to life. You spend days, weeks, months doing research, laying down pages and pages and pages of notes. Enough to be a small novel in itself. And then you start writing.
by Daniel Brotzel
Finishing a book sounds like hard enough work when there’s just one of you. Can working with someone else really help? Yes! says Dan Brotzel, who’s recently launched a novel he wrote with two pals. Here’s the why and the how…
by Luna Corbden
I have turned my inner narrative around with one simple new rule: “Count your successes.”
by Paul Jessup
Novels are hard, yo. I mean, books in general, maybe writing overall? But for me making that leap from short stories to novels was a difficult transition. I had to completely change my writerly habits, completely reinvent the ways I was doing things altogether.
Alex Delmore wants out of her dead-end suburban town, but her parents are broke, her brother is an idiot, and NYU seems like a distant dream. Good thing there’s a genie in town—and he’s hiring at the Wellspring Mall.
Jean Marie Ward writes about all things weird, wonderful and downright peculiar in her hometown of Washington, DC. Sometimes she writes fiction. It makes a lot more sense than the facts. Her web site is JeanMarieWard.com.
