What makes people follow, favorite, click, and retweet? This post updates one I did two years ago--a generation or more in social media right?--with info I learned from a Random Penguin author … [Read More...]
A Survival Guide to Writers Conferences: 1. Eat Chocolate for Breakfast
A friend who is heading for a writers' conference next month asked if I had any advice, and since it's not the first time I've been asked: 1. Eat Chocolate for Breakfast. Just a square of extra … [Read More...]
STOP Writing — Without Giving Up
I'm delighted to have as my guest this week Jennifer Haupt, whose debut novel, In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills is just out! Jennifer went to Rwanda as a journalist in 2006, twelve years after the … [Read More...]
Steinbeck on Struggling with a Scene
Another bit of great writing advice from John Steinbeck: … [Read More...]
John Steinbeck Support for NANOWRIMO
This won't be an all-Steinbeck-all-the-time month, but I did find another bit of useful advice in that The Paris Review piece--especially apt for cranking out that first draft during NANOWRIMO. - Meg … [Read More...]
Advice from Steinbeck to Kick Off NANOWRIMO
Today is the first day of NANOWRIMO, wherein some crazy folks try to write an entire novel draft in a month. I confess that is faster that I can write (and anyway, I'm going on a girlfriend … [Read More...]
Writing Advice from Ernest Hemingway on the Anniversary of For Whom the Bell Tolls
Today marks the anniversary of the publication in 1940 of my personal favorite Hemingway novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Coincidentally, tomorrow marks the anniversary of the publication of The Son … [Read More...]
5 Quotes from Toni Morrison
Nobel- and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison's novels include The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, and A Mercy. I've lately been reading her God Help the Child, so here you go: … [Read More...]
Caution: Writing While Parenting
My guest today, Anne Michaud, is a veteran political journalist who writes a regular Newsday op-ed column, has won more than twenty-five writing and reporting awards, and has twice been named … [Read More...]
365 Great Quotes from Women
For the first day of fall, from Nora Ephron: Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your … [Read More...]