“Books are people What appears to be but simple pages, Are pieces of what was once alive: Yellow and wrinkled and ripped and crisp. Pieces of love and hatred and strife.” Why would anyone want to write a book? The headaches, the long hours, the frustration, the tears, the sleepless nights, the overwhelming loom of […]
I was sitting down with a friend one day who asked me, “What is poetry and how do you make it?” Mind you, she had an English 100 class she needed to interview a writer for, so it wasn’t entirely that random of a question. But, even for me, having been eagerly writing since the […]
The vast majority of character descriptions are simply lazy. They recycle typical ideas about hair, eye color, and build, giving you more information about the character’s fitting for a dress or suit than the type of information you need to know them intimately. The first thing you should do when describing a character is to pick a […]
Humor writing is everywhere. Take Macbeth, for example. Why else would Shakespeare have a scene with a drunken porter discussing the pros and cons of alcohol on libido right after Macbeth murders the king? “Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;/ it provokes the desire, but it takes/away the performance. (Act II, Scene III)” Shakespeare’s drunken porter was […]
Are you a curious novelist exploring uncharted genres or are you a current writer of the past seeking new adventures? Whatever your purpose, these 40 historical writing prompts, partnered with a collection of vintage photographs, are guaranteed to help you get ideas, transcend to an inspiring era and help you to write your own piece […]
This post is from 2016. Read the UPDATED version here: 40+ Podcasts for Writers I’ve never listened to a podcast that I didn’t find insightful. Maybe I just have great taste in podcasts? Even when I was laughing my butt off while listening to Krystyna Hutchinson and Corinne Fisher, I still managed to learn something […]
Evaluating online literary magazines can be tough. According to Duotrope, there are thousands out there and more popping up every day. It’s just not that difficult to throw up a website and start publishing friends. But the online literary journals below raise the bar far higher. They have made publishing online not just a vehicle for […]
She had heard his excuses before, thousands of times, but this time she was sick of them. She had never known that a human body could twist into that position. The bookcases tilted at a precarious angle over the sleeping infant. He was a brave man except when it came to small, tight spaces like […]
So you have an idea bouncing around in your head and you can hardly keep it to yourself. In fact, you probably haven’t kept it to yourself. You can’t help it. It’s so exciting and you can’t stop thinking about it, so it only seems right that you tell your Starbucks barista full speed at […]
I spent a few years as an actress in Los Angeles, waiting for someone to give me a job, before deciding to explore my writing skills, with the goal of writing my next big movie and starring in it. So I set out to become a Writer. What I learned is that writers and actors have a […]
