In 2009, I left my job as a high school English teacher and ran right smack dab into the Great Recession. It hurt. Nobody was hiring. I couldn’t get an interview, much less a job. After a few months of false starts and throwing myself at the wall, I harnessed what was left of my entrepreneurial spirit and started a wedding videography business. Wedding videography was something I had done…
Missing my poetry-mom Lucille Clifton especially today. Here she is reading aloud a poem of hers that I love. Until I got to graduate school, until I got to the people who would become my writing family and my writing community, I wasn’t encouraged much by my peer set in creative writing classes. Especially while I lived and worked in the Deep South. I always felt out of place, out of…
I spent a fair amount of my youth writing dense, novel-length, & character-driven fanfiction (henceforth referred to as fanfic) until 1am on a school night. After all my homework was done, of course. My fandoms were primarily Sailor Moon and Harry Potter, the former being the one I really dove into. And it was, perhaps, the best crash course in writing money could’ve bought me. So for the newbie writer,…
The above quote from the inestimable Neil Gaiman is a lot of why I’ve had beta readers since my fanfic days, but have never had a dedicated critique partner in another writer, at least not since leaving school. Writers have a much, much harder time resisting the urge to say how we would do something — which is not always helpful when talking to another writer. I think it can…
Our topic this week is first drafts, and let’s be honest: I am not a trained writer. I don’t have an MFA or a background in journalism or even an English major. So it might amaze you that my novel (now titled The Queen of Hearts) was in near-flawless form when I finished its first draft. Revision? Ha! I had to look up the meaning of the word. I’m…
I love this topic, because I know so much more about not writing than I do writing. Not writing is easy, and most of us do it all day long, for so many hours that we get very good at it, and I myself am positively expert. I’ve run into a couple of folks who will say, with a straight face, that writing is such an imperative for them that…
As the last Deb to launch her book out into the world (THREE WEEKS TO GO) I’m at a disadvantage to discuss hindsight. However, I have the distinct advantage of learning from those who have gone before me, so notes have been taken and tips have been appreciated. Granted, I’ll likely only tame the worry versus eliminate it completely, and while I love Amy’s suggestion to do guest posts as they…
*Disclaimer: In no way am I suggesting I’ve mastered the art of (writing about) sex. Just so you know. Writing my first book was mostly an exercise in learning how NOT to write a book. Along with sorting out dialogue, tone, character arcs, tension, and pacing, I also had to sort out sex – specifically, how to write sex into a book. I thought it would be easy. After all,…
We talk a lot about how solitary writing can be. And it is — unless you don’t want it to be, of course. I agree it helps if you’re a writer who likes her own company, because inevitably you will find yourself locked in a room with only your laptop, a cup of old and cold coffee, and hundreds of pages to write or revise…probably more than once. Before…
Being a writer is … awesome. From the fun and chaos of journalism school, to writing articles on everything from finding body confidence in my birthday suit to surrogacy, to penning a novel that will soon grace bookstore shelves, it’s been a dream “job” so far. Because of this I bristle a little when I hear others lament the challenges of this career, though I certainly understand the inclination. There…
