August 15, 2024
By Sally Jenkins My first novel was self-published and my second was partnership-published. I was determined to get my third book traditionally published. A round of agent submissions created a mound of rejections. I entered a Twitter agent-pitching contest. Honing my blurb to its bare bones resulted in a call for the full manuscript. The…
August 8, 2024
By Gabrielle Brinsmead When I was nine years old, I was chosen to represent my primary school at a luncheon hosted by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. Seated across the table from the CBCA’s patron, Lady Cutler, I told her that I was going to be a writer one day. ‘Oh, are you?’ Lady…
August 1, 2024
By Jean Burgess Despite joining writers’ organizations, taking multiple webinars, reading a plethora of online articles about getting my debut fiction published, I fell into the many traps that novice writers succumb to when too eager to get their “baby” published. Through learning from my mistakes, being open to the advice of veteran writers and…
By Emily-Jane Hills Orford Bam, beep, buzzzz, clickety click and the sounds erupt from the pages of a story. Children’s books use a lot of sound words: echoism, or more elaborately identified as onomatopoeia. They can be used in any story, for any age group. In fact, some stories demand the use of sound words….
July 25, 2024
By Damiana Andonova I remember writing my first children’s book manuscript in one sitting as a high schooler. In college, I sent perhaps seventy query letters. I reached out to my mentors at the journalism institute where I worked, I talked to literature professors at my university. I even had my lab partner provide beautiful,…
July 17, 2024
By Gayle O’Brien Kennedy At some stage in most writers’ journeys, “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron finds its way onto their radar. First published in 1992, it is often considered the indispensable workbook for turning the intention to write into the act itself. At its heart are morning pages. If you’re unfamiliar with morning…
July 15, 2024
By Julie Artz There’s a reason I advise my book coaching clients to write their query before they draft their full manuscript, and it’s not so that they’re ready to query agents or editors as soon as the first draft is done. A good query letter: And if you can do that, you likely have…
July 11, 2024
By Ellen Levitt Have you ever misheard lyrics to songs? Lines of dialogue in a TV show or film? The tagline of a commercial or jingle? If you have, you might be embarrassed; you might laugh it off; and you might even turn it into fodder for your writing. For all my musical knowledge, I’ve…
July 4, 2024
By Liz Alterman Writing a memoir is a wonderful way to capture your experiences, imbue them with meaning, and share them with others—whether you choose to keep your audience limited to friends and family or pursue a more traditional route, hoping your work reaches the masses. There’s no shortage of articles about the challenges of…
June 27, 2024
by Fiona M Jones I’ll always remember 2023 as the year when the manure hit the rotating blades with regard to AI-generated content. For the first time, AI chatbots showed that they could produce, on demand, sentences and paragraphs in response to a given prompt. To all appearances, robots were writing articles, verses, narratives—and doing…
June 19, 2024
by Thomas Smith I have to be honest. It’s pretty nice to walk in a bookstore and see your novel on the shelf. Or to get a note from your editor saying your novel is still in the Amazon top 100 for the second week in a row. Having written a novel is a big…
June 6, 2024
By Amy Glin The road to seeing my novel, G.O.D., self-published on Amazon (and other sites), was long and worth it. It began in 2008. I hit the publish button in 2024. It took nine years to write and edit. I threw out the first 80 pages and the second 35, and then I found…
May 30, 2024
By Andrew Park Third drafts? No-one told us about third drafts! If you’re a newbie writer ploughing through the first draft of your first novel, the idea of a third draft may cause you no end of dismay. “When,” you may ask yourself, “will this thing ever be finished?” The optimistic answer — at least…
May 23, 2024
By Winifred Òdúnóku Many writers have their unique rejection stories to tell. Some rejections can be so demoralising that they make a writer stop submitting to a particular magazine, and there are those – the encouraging ones – that push writers to move out of their comfort zones. Meanwhile, some writers enjoy celebrating milestones of…
May 16, 2024
By Emily-Jane Hills Orford What is a character sketch? Simply put, character sketches are a clever way to really get to know your characters before you even plot them into a story. If you don’t know your characters, how can you possibly convince your readers to know them? Plus, this exercise becomes a good resource,…