Dilemma is the problem your book solves, whether it is how to plant a bonsai garden or who killed the victim in a murder mystery. Dilemma, ...

One spring, I was wallowing in the discontent of rejection letters. I’d sent my first novel to agent after agent, publisher after publisher...

After months of revising my novel-in-progress, I was still stumped as to its theme. My chapters hung together pretty well but the manuscrip...

In each stage of writing your book, chances are you’ll meet a most unsavory part of yourself: the Inner Critic. It’s a negative self that ...

For twelve years, I wrote a syndicated weekly newspaper column. I only had six hundred words each week, so I learned to wrap the column nea...

Every book balances immediate writing in present time and writing that feels more reflective, that shares a passage of time or an overview o...

Few books arrive fully formed. Rather they grow from regular, unflinching practice of our art and craft. Writing a book takes the same eve...

In my Madeline Island retreat on book-writing this past July, we were joined by a man who summered on the island.  He was retired from a ver...

It's September again.  Crisp school supplies, clean classrooms, launching into a fresh cycle of learning.  September for me is about bei...

A reader from Minnesota sent me a good question.  She'd taken my two-day book writing workshop at the Loft Literary Center in July, and ...