» A Guest Author

Dealing With “Backseat Writers”

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…

Issue Five Hundred Twenty Six

Imitating John Steinbeck: A Guide to Keeping a Writing Log

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,…

Issue Five Hundred Twenty Six

The Story Behind “This Is Not My Story”

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….

Issue Five Hundred Twenty Five

Colloquialism in Text

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,…

Issue Five Hundred Twenty Four

My Journey from Self Publishing to Traditional Publication

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…

Case Studies Issue Five Hundred Twenty Three

How to Set Concrete Goals for Your Writing

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…

Issue Five Hundred Twenty Two Special Feature

How a Reprint and a Long Held Story Got Published

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…

Case Studies Issue Five Hundred Twenty One

Case Study: How “A Long Walk with Mary: A Search for the Mother of God” Was Published

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…

Case Studies Issue Five Hundred Nineteen

The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts: Now Seeking Submissions

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…

Creative Non Fiction Fiction Issue Five Hundred Seventeen Literary Journals Poetry

7 Ways Blogging Helped My Writing

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…

Issue Five Hundred Seventeen Uncategorized

My Path to Publication

By Jane Lo I’ve always loved to write stories. Prior to 2020, I had written a few short stories and personal essays – and when I was in high school, had even written a long, meandering tale I liked to think of as a ‘novella’ – but it wasn’t until January 2020 that I really…

Issue Five Hundred Sixteen Special Feature

Writing Authentic Historical Fiction

By Garth Pettersen Historical fiction can be defined as made-up stories involving true events or series of events that happened at an earlier time. Some suggest historical fiction should be set before mid-twentieth century, but to my thinking if a reader accepts a time setting to be recognizably different from the present, it is history….

Issue Five Hundred Fifteen Special Feature

Lessons from a 3-Year-5-Month Writing Streak

By Ratika Deshpande I started writing every day when I was 16. Because I was young, I’d developed certain ideas about how writing works by learning about other writers’ processes. I took these notions with me to my writing desk every day for over three years. And I watched as each was built upon or…

Issue Five Hundred Fourteen

8 Tips for Making Your True Story Come Alive

By Emily-Jane Hills Orford I have always loved apples, applesauce and cooking with apples. It’s all rooted in a fond memory that makes a great story, well worth the telling and sharing multiple times over. But, to just say I like to make applesauce isn’t enough. I am a storyteller, after all, and even my…

Issue Five Hundred Sixteen Special Feature

POV – Don’t Confuse the Reader

By Emily-Jane Hills Orford Whose story are you telling? Yours? Or someone else’s? Are you planning to share the story from multiple perspectives? From the point of view of the protagonist as well as the antagonist? Not to mention the other characters in the story? Multiple points of view can be complicated, both for the…

Issue Five Hundred Ten Special Feature

Articles by A Guest Author