Saving a Story’s Life
People write for all kinds of reasons. I like to pretend I write because I love literature, because I have at least some gift for the craft and because I have important things to say about the human condition, but…
Category: The Writing Life
How to Support Your Friend When Their Book Debuts
Congratulations, you’re friends with a writer! How brave of you. You’ve befriended someone who spends a LOT of time talking to/thinking about/complaining about people who exist only in her* mind. Your second question** is how can I best support my…
Friday Feast: Dark Books, Beautiful Sentences, Indie Bookstores and More Answers to Party Questions
Is there anything better than eating and reading in December, or really, any time of the year? Friends, I think not. This week, we explore some of the best sentences in literature and the darkest books ever written just in…
Happy Indie Story, Part Eight: My Top Five Indie Author Lessons
At the end of every year, I look back on the past several months at what I’ve done, what I’ve learned, and what I can do better. In honor of that and the new Chris Rock film, Top Five, which…
Friday Feast: Post-NaNoWriMo, Creative Sleep, Sexism, Book Riot’s Best and the Ferguson Library
It’s a grab bag of links this week, kind of like all those leftovers that end up in your fridge from holiday parties and cookie swaps. At the last party I attended, I scored some homemade fudge brownies. ‘Tis the…
Fiction-Writing: My Dead Darling
By guest contributor, Sharon Bially. Years ago I began fiddling around with a work-in-progress known, for lack of a better title, as My Life. It was all very preliminary: some vague thoughts about where the story might lead; some images…