Revision Scream Queen
Every now and then, I reach out to writing friends and classmates I haven’t talked to in a while. Part of the reason is to ensure they’re not dead on the toilet*. None of them are dead, they’re just busy…
The University of Orlando Online Writing School
Go Figure: Musings from the Mind of Rob Wilstein Dear Writer, If you’re like me, dean of students at the University of Orlando Online Writing School, you’ve taken your fair share of writing classes designed to turn you into the…
Master and Servant: My Outline and Me
My classmates called it my spreadsheet. It was a little embarrassing that to write a novel I needed a chart. 3 columns x 76 rows = 228 fields of information that I made myself fill in. I didn’t want to…
Knitting Stories (and Sweaters)
I’ve become a knitter. I’ve learned alongside my mentor, Stacie, who says things like, “It’s not hard. It’s just about making loops. Loops and loops.” Over the past year, I’ve progressed from making scarves to knitting a sweater, which I’m…
Scents and Sensibility
I lost nearly all my sense of smell when I was eight. One day my socks itched and the next day I was allergic to seemingly everything including “all grasses in the world,” the grim doctor intoned, putting the kybosh…
When the Black Dog Bites: How to Write When You’re Depressed
The cliché of the depressed writer can seem almost romantic to someone who has never tried to put pen to paper or been in the thrall of senseless emotional suffering. But for those of us who wish to write, depression…