The dreaded, the terrible, the unthinkable second act. Oh, how writers of all kinds everywhere loathe it. It's the place your pacing, story, and steam tends to wither, and you're left staring down the barrel of "well now what?" There is, however good news.Read More

Social media is a seductress that sucks away tons of time we could be using for writing. However, it is also a useful tool for marketing. I’m not going to talk about limiting your time on social media or any of that. I’m also not here to talk to you about how to market using...Read More

I received a rather salty (unfriendly) comment on an old blog today that read as an author who had been either mistreated by the publishing industry venting or an author who hated published authors and everyone associated with them because they hadn’t been successful in that route. While I understand frustration when the industry mistreats...Read More

A dear friend of mine recently had an experience at a bardic circle (a musical event where folks sit around a campfire and perform to each other) where a group of semi-professionals who didn’t care that it was someone else’s turn decided to shout her down and sing over her. Now, my friend is a wonderful...Read More

When asked the question of “who do you write for,” many authors respond with writing for themselves. While it’s… almost true, in a way, it doesn’t really work. If you’re writing for yourself, and only yourself, it’s journaling. While journaling is wonderful, helpful, and positive, most of us are hoping to publish our writing, and...Read More

Freelancers, artists, and creatives have this nasty situation where the world thinks we aren’t worth paying because we are “just” artists. I could rant about that for thousands of words, but let’s suffice to say that is utterly and completely absurd. Yes. It’s so absurd it warrants two adverbs. Worse yet, many folks seem to...Read More

If you punch “writing advice” into Google you’ll come back with about a billion results with almost as many opinions. The key here is to research everything and don’t take anything for granted, no matter who it comes fromRead More

We hear this often, but what does it really mean? It certainly doesn’t mean you can’t write thing outside your realm of personal experience (though things you relate to personally will be stronger stories for you).Read More

The best way you can learn about writing and about publishing is accepting that you don’t know everything. There are a lot of moving pieces to the publishing industry. One of the first things we learn when we enter this world is we can’t go it alone, and we don’t know everything.Read More

We hear this word thrown around a lot, but many people seem to miss the mark on what it means. While the literal definition of a professional is just someone who gets paid, being “professional” encompasses more than that. In that case, let’s dig into what the publishing world considers to be a professional: Dressing...Read More