I Tested Out Paid Beta Readers So You Don’t Have To
To beta read, or not to beta read, that is the question Oh, beta readers. If you’re a writer in the midst of writing and editing a novel, you’re probably quite familiar with the term. It’s the idea that you…
The Art of the Flashback
Flashbacks in your story can be useless, or they can be an incredible way to add characterization or further your plot. The choice is up to you. Do you know something that bothers me when I am reading a novel?…
5 Ways to Make Writing a Less Lonely Business
Writing may be an individual sport, but that doesn’t mean you can’t develop your own team to weather the industry Writing is a solitary business. If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard that adage before. Writing is, simply by nature…
How to Utilize Paragraph Structure in Your Writing
The smallest details can have the biggest impact on your readers If you’re a writer, you’re probably used to thinking long and hard about everything you put into a story. If you’re like me, you probably spend hours upon hours…
Abraham Lincoln
Flashback number one. The frigid air danced through the trees, making its way through my layers of clothing. Jean jacket, blue knit scarf, purple and gold striped sweater, dingy white tank top. None were a match for the nipping of…
I’ll Just Burn Brighter
Sometimes a song (or two) is all we have When I got the call, I was standing on the school shuttle, hand tied up in the strap overhead to keep myself from catapulting into the student in front of me.…
Winding
A memory in vivid color. Every morning we’d drive the same route to school. A right turn, past the Baker’s Springs sign and on to Duplex Road. The road was so narrow two cars could barely pass by without brushing…
Over, Under, Through, Around: Narrative in Creative Nonfiction
“Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilizers.” ― A.S. Byatt Sitting on a hard plastic chair in a windowless classroom below the Osborne Center on my college campus, I watched as my creative writing professor went around the…
What Makes a Good Poem?
When you think of poetry, your mind might go to the classics. Perhaps to Homer’s The Odyssey or to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales — both epic stories told in meter and reflected in the tropes of modern storytelling still used today. Or maybe when you…
The Life of a Writer is a Life of Rejection
This is a post I never published from spring 2017, yet is particularly poignant after a slew of another type of rejections recently… I’ve been meaning to write something about rejection for a while. The thing is, I find this…
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