Word Problems for Writers
1. You have 20 minutes to write before your child wakes up, or you have to go to work, or your cat finally chews through your computer’s power cord. You turn on your computer and see that you have 5…
1. You have 20 minutes to write before your child wakes up, or you have to go to work, or your cat finally chews through your computer’s power cord. You turn on your computer and see that you have 5…
Sit in front of your computer for hours. If you only write one word, that’s ok, you wrote one word. Subscribe to lots of literary magazines so that you can tell people that you subscribe to a lot of literary…
Twenty years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by the novelist Robert Cormier. That night he said, “The reader doesn’t care what you were trying to write. The reader only cares about what’s on the page.” In…
I don’t even want to look at my novel draft. I want to burn it and watch the pieces float away and disappear forever. My characters are screaming at me, and I am ignoring them. The good news, I suppose,…
Dear Ms. J., We’ve never met each other, but several years ago you took the time to send me a handwritten note regarding my story, Every Bird Casts a Shadow, after I submitted it to The Sun. You were kind…
Tell Us About Yourself: In my free time, I read obituaries. You should also know that I have insomnia, especially when my word count is too low, or I’ve spent the previous five hours staring at a blank page, or…