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It’s NaNoWriMo Season! What can we learn from it?

Though NaNoWriMo started out as an activity by novelists, for novelists, there’s plenty all writers can learn from the concept, no matter what genre we ...

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Banish the Bogeyman: How to Write a Back Cover You (& Your Readers) Will Love

book matters audience

Literally no writer I have ever worked with has relished writing the back cover. None of them anticipated writing their back cover with glee and ...

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The Reverse Outline—What It Is and How It Can Help You

feedback fiction

You don’t need to make yourself a pest asking all of your friends and acquaintances to read your work and tell you their polite impressions. ...

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What Writer’s Block Really Is—And How to Beat It

revision craft questions

A lot of folks have this idea that writer’s block is something that simply happens to you. There’s also a misconception that writer’s block is ...

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Tell Me What Your Book Is About: the Key to Writing, Revising…and Selling Your Book

book matters audience

The process of answering "What is your book about?” pays off hugely while you are writing, revising, and getting ready to sell your book.

Get Focused, Get Good: Sprint Your way to Writing Success

writing advice craft questions

Writers are subject to all kinds of advice. We like to give it, and others like to give it to us. One of the most ...

The Creative Iceberg: What Your Readers See Isn’t Everything

writing fiction

Have you ever been annoyed, while writing, by how much time you spent researching a fact that made it into maybe a sentence or two ...

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Know Your audience: Your Readers Are Your Partners

revision audience

Last time we talked about using judgy readers to our advantage. Now, more about those readers…first in a series of follow-up posts. == In an ...

Let’s Be Judgy Together: Making Opinionated Readers Your Allies

Editing craft questions

Who doesn’t love to have an opinion? The most captivating pieces of cultural criticism—including book reviews—are the strongly-worded ones. We immediately get something to respond ...

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A Time to Remember: Good Timeline Management for Any Genre

Editing craft questions

Certain things take time. Long journeys, a properly-simmering blood feud, forgiveness, getting to the South Pole, growing up, learning to play an instrument...and any true ...

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Writing As Process: What We Can Learn from Puzzles

book matters craft questions

In the beginning, you may have no idea whether any two pieces are going to fit together, so you need some basic way to create ...

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Choose Your Words with Care: The Role of Emotion in Writing

writing books

We writers can be a judgy lot. And we really enjoy ranting about our pet peeves (words included). Yet "good" words are entirely subjective. Talk ...

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Do Writing Apps Like Grammarly Mean You Can Skip Editing?

Editing copyediting

“But I’ve already put my manuscript through Hemingway [or Grammarly, or some other writing or grammar app]!” I get it. Editing can be expensive. In ...

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The Pros and Cons of Writing Workshops

writing books

To pull from Dickens, it is a truth broadly acknowledged that writing is a skill best learned by doing. In fact, that’s the very meaning ...

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Literary Throat Clearing: How to Recognize & Make It Work For You

Editing craft questions

And just like all of us would rather everyone keep their phlegm to themselves and ideally as far away from us as possible, your readers ...

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Why “follow your heart” isn’t always the best writing advice

writing craft questions

Scrolling through Twitter one day this spring (yes, I know), I happened upon writing advice that went something like this: “When someone says [x] about ...

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In Praise of Flaws: They Not Only Make Us Human, They Make Our Writing Better

revision books

In writing, as in other parts of life, we may be tempted to make ourselves look good. But both life and reading continue to convince ...

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What Are You Afraid Of? Common Writing Fears

revision coaching

As Dune so famously has it (yes, that Dune), “Fear is the mind-killer.” Fear will get in the way of any and all writing if ...