By Sherryl Clark It’s a familiar complaint. Everything else seems to get in the way—family commitments, work, sports, the need to sleep—and nowhere is there time to sit down and write. People often say to me, “How do you find the time? You’re so prolific.” Well, no, ‘m not. A lot of the time I … Read more
By Jeanne M. Fielding 1,000 words a day or more? You’ve got to be kidding! As if writing a story wasn’t daunting enough, published writers have killed many a tree imparting the “writing is a discipline” mantra. You must commit to writing five gazillion words a day—no matter how long it takes you. My reply … Read more
By Laura Bell Let’s just get real for a second. There probably isn’t a way to get around them completely. As negative as this sounds, they are growing by leaps and bounds. The use of the Web in advertising writing jobs has just made it all that easier. Here is the latest one that I … Read more
By Radika Meganathan You always wanted to be a writer. Back in school, you won prizes and competitions in creative writing and storytelling. Why, you have even had few articles published. Still, you aren’t exactly loaded with assignments. There are no surprise checks in your mailbox or even returned manuscripts. You do not know what … Read more
By Rudy Shur Excerpted from the book How To Publish Your Nonfiction Book Over the years, I’ve seen literally hundreds of submission packages. Some of them inspired me to immediately request more information from the author. In other cases, however, I could not send the package to the kill pile quickly enough. Throughout this chapter, … Read more
By Joyce Lavene 1. Read what you want to write. I can’t stress this enough. If you don’t know what the market is doing, you can’t expect publication. Have a feeling for what you’re doing, write from the heart, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you love your baby, everyone else will. … Read more
By Michelle Gardner Maybe it’s because the writing life is a lonely one that we surround ourselves with comfort clutter. Or maybe it’s because we always have a story or stories in various forms of completion that causes the research notes to spill into each other. Or maybe it’s because we want to have everything … Read more
By Ben Baker As a newspaper editor for longer than I really want to think about, I’ve written, read, edited, and cursed more newspaper feature articles than anyone except another newspaper editor. The cursing part comes in because most newspaper feature articles I read are one-person interviews which are almost monologues of the person being … Read more
By Mridu Khullar Editors can be mean, unethical and downright unprofessional. But not all editors fit that bill. In fact, most editors would rather give you money than take it, would rather make no changes than rewrite whole pieces two hours before deadline, and would rather accept a piece than start their mornings sending out … Read more
By Monica Di Santi Humor, which is the ability to find a comic or amusing quality in a situation, action or group of ideas, can help you not only to laugh and have fun, but it can be a great tool to help you harvest new ideas, overcome writer’s block and improve your craft. To … Read more
