Writing

No, it will not be easy. Yes, it will be rewarding. (Eventually.)

What if instead of searching through files looking for a character profile or rifling back through chapters, all you had to do was look up? That is the just one example of the brilliance of creating a muse board.

As a culture, we often fetishize the debut writer as some sort of self-arising wunderkind, someone that comes “out of nowhere” or had “splashed onto the scene” unannounced, seemingly without a pre-…

Do yourself a favor and read these 10 pieces of advice first.

50,000 words isn't an arbitrary number

Adapted from the essay “Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits” in Essays One. * The following are just my personal pieces of advice. They won’t be the same as someone else’s, and they may …

Get your work recognized: write a brag document

1. Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance. Dragon is pretty much the gold standard for dictation. And Nuance seems to have invented the entire industry before dictation was cool. They have deep roots in medical transcription, for example. Die hard dictators swear by the PC version of this software. The Macintosh version was (puzzlingly) discontinued last year. Since Dragon has such a big reach, lifelong Mac users have been known to purchase cheap PCs to run this software.

In Into the Woods and on his online courses John Yorke recommends asking 10 questions to check you've got your story straight – read them here.

The online writing group, writing workshop, and writing community where writers get quality critiques and feedback on their writing.

When it comes to writing the “other,” what questions are we not asking?

As a writer and teacher of memoir, I get asked one question above many: how do you navigate the tricky terrain of writing about family? I have many answers to this question, as I gave it a lot of careful thought when writing Sins of My Father. I cleared the book with those close family […]

This "rule" is neither a CIA psyop nor does it mean what some critics think

Although I still consider myself a newbie to the world of being a professional writer, I have a reasonable number of events, signings ...

How to write a killer opening line. Why Google is not research. When to rip it up and start again. Whatever you do, just write! Lessons from acclaimed novelist and creative writing professor Colum McCann

Yesterday, FSG published Susan Sontag’s Debriefing, a new collection of the writer’s short fiction. I’m always excited to read more of Sontag’s work—which is convenient, bec…

I put up a little thread on Twitter on this subject last week. A lot of people seemed to want to hear more. So here it is. A long read I’m…

Lord Chesterfield called the novel “a kind of abbreviation of a Romance.” Ian McEwan described the more compact novella as “the beautiful daughter of a rambling, bloated, ill-shaven giant.” William…

How to write good dialogue? Well, the rule is that your characters’ speech should always sound believable.

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Today, our sponsor Reedsy has put together a list of the most common mistakes for rookie novelists (Want more advice from Reedsy? Check out their webcast on writing and submitting query letters!):

The hardest part of writing a novel is the middle. Here’s how to get through it.

How millennial novelists are confronting the challenging of representing our text habits in fiction

Tips, tricks, and hard-won lessons: from creating drafts to working with editors.

Discover these fantastic podcasts for writing inspiration.

Free guides, podcasts and interviews about writing. Featuring Margaret Atwood, Nicci French, Tim Clare, Elizabeth Haynes, Mark Dawson, Joanna Penn and more!

One day, in my intro to creative writing class, after I had my students spend a few minutes free-writing in response to a Frida Kahlo painting, one of them raised her hand. “Do you mind if I ask a…

How long does it take to write a book? Stephen King says writing a book should take no more than three months—and this author discovered he's right.