Writing has a pattern, particularly in the fall, particularly if you’re still new to writing. November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), in which writers try to finish a first draft of a novel. Then the holidays hit, and the writing goes away for 31 days. January rolls around, and writers make resolutions to write […]
Continue ReadingI don’t know about you folks, but I’ve had a heck of a tough year. Nothing super serious, in the scheme of things. Just a lot of sadness piling up, as I lost good friends (too many!), a favorite cat, dealt with illness and emergencies and some other smaller problems. Enough that I feel a […]
Continue ReadingI had a dry spell for news during the month of March, but as the rains ease in the Northwest, the writing news dry spell ends as well. Or something like that. Yes, I’m mixing metaphors. And not very successfully. First, the latest volume of Fiction River just appeared. Sparks, edited by Rebecca Moesta, contains […]
Continue ReadingIt’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to a bunch of writers at the very beginning of their careers. When Dean and I teach our in-person workshops, we teach professional writers. With our online workshops and lectures, we deal with writers who are just starting out, but we don’t interact in person. (I’m not […]
Continue ReadingI read 250 manuscripts by professional writers this month. All of the stories were good. Some fit anthologies better than others. We held a writing workshop where six of us edited for Fiction River. You will see some tremendous upcoming stories, not just in FR, but in other magazines as well. Because once the editing […]
Continue ReadingWhen we set up the anthology workshop that we held last week, Dean Wesley Smith told everyone that they would have a great opportunity to network. After all, 50 professional writers whose work runs the gamut of the fiction genres would be there from all over the world. A few of the new attendees worried […]
Continue ReadingAs I got deep into this discoverability series, I promised that I would examine marketing strategies from passive to active. I have to abandon that promise now, because most everything we’ll discuss from here on out will be active. By active, I mean you’ll have to do something—write something, design something, or pay for something—and […]
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