July 27, 2023
By Jean Burgess If you are one of those “full steam ahead” types, who are too impatient to learn from your mistakes, then stop reading now. However, if you are willing to learn how, as a novice fiction writer, I made a few major mistakes and still ended up landing a contract with a small…
By Emily-Jane Hills Orford Are you writing a tear-jerker scene? Or a passionate love scene? How about something humorous? Emotions are a powerful tool to engage readers. You want them laughing, crying and getting involved with the characters. What are some of the techniques you can use to embellish the emotions? From asking the famous…
July 20, 2023
by Syris Valentine Whether you’re pursuing indie or traditional publishing, practically every author needs their own platform to help market their books. The world of author marketing can be overwhelming at times. Even when you’re only concerned with social media, there’s a lot to decide. Do you choose Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or any of…
July 13, 2023
By Tom Vandel I started writing because I couldn’t sleep. I’d lie awake at night thinking of a story (mine was about getting lost in Montana) and my mind would conjure and ponder and wonder what if, what if, on and on, until I realized I had to write the damn thing in order to…
July 5, 2023
By Ann Ingalls The first word I ever read and made sense of was the word come. I sat alone at my parents’ dining room table. Held my book and it occurred to me that C made a hard sound. M made a soothing sound. That was enough information to read the word. I was gob-smacked!…
June 29, 2023
by Ellen Levitt Have you ever been at the wheel of your car, and one of the passengers starts telling you what to do, griping about your driving, and otherwise trying to do your job? Then you’ve dealt with a backseat driver, and it can be wearisome. Have you ever found yourself in the kitchen…
By Ratika Deshpande Every time John Steinbeck sat down to write the next words of his masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath, he first wrote in his journal. This notebook, which was later published as Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath gives us a look inside Steinbeck’s mind—his struggles, his inspiration, his self-doubt,…
June 20, 2023
By Ryan Uytdewilligen In early-2015, I was working outside in the rain when an idea for my first children’s picture book struck me like lightning. It was about a little talking raindrop named Drew Drop who loses his parents when they are absorbed by the sun through the water cycle. It rhymed. It was philosophical….
June 15, 2023
By Ann Ingalls When I moved to Missouri from New York state with my husband and young children, I knew there would be many changes and adjustments. I looked forward to learning about a new part of the country, history, meeting new people, and learning about new customs. What I didn’t expect was the wonderful,…
June 8, 2023
By Rachel Presser Back in 2015, I started my own consulting business and soon added writing for hire services. With a goal to have a flexible income source that paid more than my last salaried job at a tax law office and let me focus on game development, I knew I couldn’t rely on grinding…
June 1, 2023
By Ratika Deshpande One of the most helpful things I’ve done for my writing is setting concrete goals. Writers struggle to establish a daily writing habit because, well, building habits is difficult, and we have other responsibilities that need our attention–jobs, families, health. In all that mess and uncertainty and lack of time, a concrete…
May 25, 2023
By Nancy Julien Kopp Some years ago, I had written a personal essay about how my father, who had a problem acknowledging disabled people, learned to accept his first grandchild who was born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. Those two disabilities proved a big burden for our sweet baby girl but also the catalyst for…
May 11, 2023
By Brandi Willis Schreiber This is part of our ongoing series on how authors published their first book. You can read our other stories in this series, here, here, here, here, and here. I’d been driving solo for a few hours. Long, golden stretches of West Texas blurred into New Mexico, and as I scanned the thin…
April 27, 2023
The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts is an online publisher of shortform writing like micro fiction/nonfiction, flash writing, and prose poetry. The journal is a project of Matter Press. They pay contributors $50 per published piece. At The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts they believe, “that something very small can add up to something very…
By Lory Widmer Hess In my mid-thirties, shortly before my son was born, I sold two essays to national magazines and thought my writing career had finally been launched. Then, postpartum depression and relationship issues struck, and while wrestling with those challenges, I didn’t write creatively for years. In my jobs in nonprofit publicity and…