by Edie Melson @EdieMelson I began writing like most of you did—as a creative outlet—a way to process the world around me. I kept diaries, started stories and books, played around with articles. But all of these efforts had one thing in common. They were written out of my own…

by Blythe Daniel @BlytheDaniel You stare at a blank page. Your scribbles are notes that you can’t sort out. You have journals you aren’t sure where to find what you started writing for a book someday. Does your organization of thoughts cause you to feel overwhelmed? I think one of…

by Larry J. Leech II @LarryJLeechII Sun. Sand. If not sand, maybe a pool instead. Or maybe a nice, quiet cabin in the woods. Whatever your pleasure, a good book, or books, is necessary. With summertime is here, compiling a summer reading list might be near the top of your…

by Katy Kauffman @KatyKauffman28 You might say yes. How many of us have cried when we’ve been frustrated with the writing process? Or when we’ve been in the editing stage and just wanted to finish? But have you ever cried when you wrote something because you realize full force just…

By Aaron Gansky @ADGansky Charles Baxter, in Burning Down the House, Essays on Fiction, devotes an entire chapter to a principle he calls “Stillness.” To paraphrase a rather lengthy and well documented argument, he proposes that stillness, a moment in fiction where action subsides and characters/narrators focus on the minutiae of their…

by Cindy Sproles @CindyDevoted I opened the manuscript and began to read. Nice description, story seemed interesting but two chapters in, I still knew nothing about the protagonist. What happened? The writer had laid some good building blocks, but what happened to the protagonist. The best way I can explain…