Friday, February 19, 2021

Dealing with Rejection Close to Home: When Family and Friends React to Your Writing

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A reader sent me a poignant email a few months ago. She's writing a memoir and happened to show segments to her family--for all the best...
Friday, February 12, 2021

A Different Way to Work with Revision for Your Book--Segments and Reverses

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Revision is the final stage of the book journey, after the gathering of material and the forming of a rough draft, after the structuring tha...
Friday, February 5, 2021

Unspoken Agreements and How They Drive Characters in Fiction and Memoir

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In real life, people operate under unspoken agreements that try to keep the status quo--whether that status quo is calm or the opposite. I...
Friday, January 29, 2021

Sinking into Winter: The Power of Rest and Retreat in the Writer's Life

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I've just sent the revision of my third novel to my agent, and I'm at a loss. I sit, watching the snow fall outside my office window...
Friday, January 22, 2021

Making Peace with Your Inner Critic: How to Stop Sabotaging Your Writing Life and Get Moving on That Book

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If I had a way to capture the self-talk inside most writers' brains, as they sit down to do their writing practice, here's what I mi...
Friday, January 15, 2021

The Magic of Showing Up at the Page: How to Design or Refine a Writing Practice That Works for You

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What's the difference between a writer who gets a book finished and a writer who never does? A writing practice. Believe it--there's...
Friday, January 8, 2021

Strange Alchemy--Creating the Weave of Conflict, Character, and Place in Your Fiction or Memoir

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In pre-Covid times, I regularly visited friends in Boston to hear the legendary Boston Cecelia chorus perform each holiday season. At one pe...
Friday, December 18, 2020

Writing about Tough Subjects: Award-Winning Debut Memoirist Shares Her Process

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Katherine Quie's memoir, Raising Will, Surviving the Brilliance and Blues of ADHD, received three golds in the Independent Book Publish...
Friday, December 11, 2020

What's at Stake? How to Ratchet Up the (Necessary) Tension in Your Book

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Stories tell about dilemmas--someone facing a problem, someone learning, someone solving a mystery, someone growing. Dilemma is that questio...
Friday, December 4, 2020

Planning a Brighter New Year for Your Writing Life--Are You Ready to Look Ahead?

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Hard to believe, but 2020 is almost behind us. Quite the year. If your writing has benefited from the retreat of forced isolation, you'r...