Publishing is an interesting game.  Like all business owners, some publishers are wary of risk.  They want books that adhere to tried and t...

Books become unwieldy fast.  Unlike a poem, essay, or short story, a book may generate thousands of pages by the time it's revised do...

Your scenes have voltage, electric current, for readers.  But in most novels and memoirs, there are layers of electricity, because there ar...

Candace is writing a memoir.  Her characters are the opposite of talkative.  She took my online dialogue class earlier this year and learne...

Annie, one of my readers, got surprising feedback from her writer's group.  One of her novel's characters, an abused woman trying t...

How does a memoir writer weave family stories into a larger whole?  This is the perennial challenge.  Unless you already have a fan followi...

Think your writing doesn't matter?  This week's writing exercise is to educate yourself (and inspire yourself) on the effect our wo...

One of my coaching clients, a very skilled writer, wrote me a few weeks ago about the temper tantrum she was having with her book.  It...

One of my long-time students, Linda Zlotnick, recently published her memoir,   Star Sisters.  The core story is about the death of her tw...

One of my blog readers from Europe is preparing to submit her first book to agents and publishers.  She has plans to attend the  Internatio...