» A Guest Author

Is Your Manuscript Reader-Ready? Your Query Can Tell You!

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…

Special Issue

Misheard Inspiration: Turning Mistakes Into Writing Opportunities

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…

Issue Five Hundred Eighty Special Feature

What People Don’t Tell You About Writing a Memoir

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…

Issue Five Hundred Seventy Nine

We’re Not Robots: Why AI Chatbots Can’t Replace Good Writing

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…

Issue Five Hundred Seventy Eight

Start Small and Write Books Later On

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…

Issue Five Hundred Seventy Seven Special Feature

From the Blank Page to a Self-Published Novel

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…

Issue Five Hundred Seventy Five

We Need to Talk About the Third Draft

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…

Issue Five Hundred Seventy Four

5 Things Being an Editor Has Taught Me About Rejection

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…

Issue Five Hundred Seventy Three

How Character Sketches Can Add Depth to Your Manuscript

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,…

Issue Five Hundred Seventy Two Special Feature

How to Generate Plot Ideas for Flash Fiction

Ratika Deshpande My main struggle with writing fiction has always been coming up with a plot. I believe in writing the kind of stories one likes to read, but it’s not always easy to actually put that into practice. For example, I love reading about fantasy shops, scholars, palaces, and small villages. Yet it wasn’t…

Issue Five Hundred Seventy One Uncategorized

How I Turned My First Short Story Acceptance Into Four More Publications

By Dannye Chase Three years ago, on a bright April day, I finally got up the courage to hit “send” on my first story submission, for Improbable Press’s Dark Cheer: Cryptids Emerging anthology. (Well, okay, technically I made my spouse hit “send” for me.) When the reply came, it took a moment for the word…

Issue Five Hundred Seventy Special Issue

Want Your Expressions to Blossom? Translate!

By Nazia Kamali Coming from a family of doctors, I was raised to believe in the power of science and technology, and was conditioned to pursue the field. Writing was considered an extracurricular activity to pad the resume. Furthermore, writing in English was supposed to display my understanding of the second language that I learned…

Issue Five Hundred Sixty Nine Special Feature

5 Ways You Could Be Rejecting Yourself as a Writer (And How Not To)

By Ratika Deshpande I’ve been writing for about eight years now, during which I’ve gone through several phases of rejecting my writing before others could do so. Over time, I’ve learned to recognise these thoughts and developed ways to fight them. Here they are: 1. You think you are not ready This thought is especially…

Issue Five Hundred Sixty Seven Special Feature

The Pub Crawl: My Journey to Traditional Publication

By Dr. Meryl Broughton The paths to publication are many and varied. Mine was a bit like a lurching tour of different venues, seeking the right ambience where I could find acceptance for my unusual manuscript. When I started out, I was fresh-faced, clear-thinking and naive. By the end I was a seasoned drinker, familiar…

Issue Five Hundred Sixty Six Special Feature

Navigating Your Protagonist’s Emotional Journey

By Ley Taylor Johnson Character arcs are tough. There’s no way around it—despite being one of the primary drivers of the story, dealing with your protagonist’s emotions and weaving them into the plot is hard to do. You don’t want their feelings overwhelming the plot and making it seem melodramatic, but you also don’t want…

Issue Five Hundred Sixty Five Special Feature

Articles by A Guest Author