The plan was for my novel re-write to be done by the end of June. It wasn’t. The new plan was to finish before I left on vacation this past Monday. I didn’t. To be fair, this draft was many more words than I anticipated; the original 88,000 turned into 116,000. (I’m not quite sure how that […]
Writing
How To Brand Yourself As A Writer: Guest Post
I’d like to introduce today’s guest poster, Carol Chiao. Carol and I met at the Writer’s Digest Conference last summer and have kept in touch ever since. I’m excited for her to share her marketing expertise with us today. Writers sometimes complain that branding is a mysterious concept. It doesn’t need to be. Brand encapsulates […]
Finding the Heart
At the close of the writer’s retreat I attended recently, the moderators asked us to look back over our weekend’s work and consider which pieces worked best, and why. I jotted down a few words that described my favorite essays: “family” “relationships” and “love.” Then, reconsidering, I drew a big circle around the word “love,” because […]
The Write and the Re-Write, Part 2
Continued from Part 1… After receiving much helpful feedback on my novel from agents, I had many questions to consider: Should I keep querying and hope another agent would accept the original manuscript? Or should I do an extensive edit? If I were to edit, how much would I change? Which of the agents’ suggestions […]
The Write and the Re-Write, Part 1
In my very first fiction writing class, my teacher mentioned an author he knew who would write an entire first draft of a novel, then erase it- literally delete it from his computer– and start his re-write from scratch. My fellow students and I were appalled. I couldn’t imagine doing all that work and then […]
2015 Writer’s Retreat
This past weekend, I went to my very first writer’s retreat, in Sea Girt, NJ, hosted by Women Reading Aloud. It was a wonderful, terrifying, restorative, educational, intimidating, passionate experience. I feel reticent to share details about the weekend, particularly the workshops themselves; I almost feel as though it would violate the community we writers […]