You may have said those words once or twice yourself, perhaps? (If not, please leave this blog. Now.)
It may comfort you to know that you are not alone in that sentiment: even established writers think so, now and then—and have for decades, if not centuries. To prove it, Michael Hoffman has combed [...]
I save rejection slips. In graduate school, someone mentioned an acquaintance who had wallpapered her bathroom with them, and I liked that idea. There was something honest and humbling about it. So when I started submitting my own stories to literary journals, I saved the rejections, imagining I might do the same one day. It [...]
On Oscar night, no one listens to the thank-you speeches—except the people being thanked. Likewise, no one reads the author acknowledgements of a book—or do they?
On The Millions, Henriette Lazaridis Power delves into the stories behind this oft-overlooked section of a book, from the Brontë sisters to Zadie Smith to Robin Black. And [...]
Editor’s note: At AWP 2012, which just wrapped up in Chicago, we were thrilled to hear this wonderful story from one of our contributors, Sarah Van Arsdale, and are delighted to share it with you. It’s a reminder of what conferences are really about: fostering community to buoy a writer’s spirit, helping you hang [...]
When I first got to college, I was pretty sure that I was an admissions mistake. My roommate was one of Glamour’s College Women of the Year. Another girl downstairs played piano with the Philharmonic; the guy down the hall was almost sixteen. A guy on the first floor held two patents. [...]
Recently, the New York Times tackled the burning question of why authors tweet. One main reason? To connect with the reader, of course:
For one thing, publishers are pushing authors to hobnob with readers on Twitter and Facebook in the hope they will sell more copies. But there’s another reason: Many authors have little [...]
That’s how I’d have capitalized this recent article by The Atlantic, which asked that rather big question. Describing Alex Jenni, a French biology teacher who recently won the Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary award, the article noted,
In the Alexis Jenni school of thought, a writer may be someone, anyone, with a compulsion to scrawl or [...]
On New Year’s morning this year, I was sitting at a kitchen table in Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up in Cleveland and love it, but (like most people) in the way you love your old rusty car with the duct-taped mirror and muffler tied up with a string, or your dingy old house with [...]
Everywhere you look, there are reasons not to write. If you believe in omens–as I do–you may start to wonder if the universe is trying to tell you something.
You may feel like you shouldn’t even start writing. Recently, the Huffington Post offered 10 reasons not to write your novel. And some [...]
Like many writers, I tend to think of job-related writing–like copywriting, or editing, or ghostwriting memos–as Not Really Writing. In the Huffington Post, though, Holly Robinson expresses a very different point of view:
“Doesn’t it bug you to write other people’s books when you could be working on your own?” another writer asked me recently.
Not [...]
