Sara Jones
July 2015
Several years ago, while living in South Africa, I was writing one night – a rare spurt at the time – and when finished, I stood up and said out loud, alone in my flat, “There is nothing that makes me feel more tender toward myself than this.”
Read MoreS.E. Batt
July 2015
There comes a moment in some writer’s lives where they feel that they hit a limit on their skill. It’s not that they believe they know everything about writing, but that there is an internal skill cap which they have bumped against. They report they have reached the end of their skill set, and from now on, there’s no more room for improvement.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
June 2015
There’s an epidemic of misspelling afoot. It is showing up mostly on Facebook. People from all over the country have shown symptoms of not being able to handle to vs. two vs. too. Let us examine them one at a time.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
June 2015
Years ago, while working on the final pen and ink drawings for my children’s book, I leaned in to draw a face and my hand began to shake. The more I strove to hold myself steady, the more impossible it seemed. Maxwell Maltz, doctor and self-help writer, once described this dynamic as “purpose tremors.” When someone has a specific purpose, goes towards it with great intensity, and tries very hard not to make an error, he shakes.
Read MoreTina Lincer
June 2015
Newly single, I was raising two little ones, working a day job, freelancing and turning every spare moment into a writing opportunity.
I wrote at red lights and in carpool lines. I wrote with one eye on Scooby-Doo cartoons and one on my notebook.
Read Moreby Joan Frank
June 2015
In an essay for American Theater magazine, playwright Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss) described finding himself, some years ago, in the middle of a kind of personal renaissance, having just received a wonderful award.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
May 2015
I have searched and searched, but I cannot find where the term “such that” instead of “so that” came from. I hear people say it and just edited a manuscript that used it a lot. It feels terribly wrong and a bit pompous, but I can’t find a rule anywhere that tells of its origins or its use.
Read Moreby Noelle Sterne
May 2015
You meticulously study the publication’s guidelines. You follow them precisely. You draft and redraft your submission. But . . . the rejections pour in relentlessly. You moan, scream, swear, and fling around the house, ready to throw in the sponge and throw out your keyboard.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
May 2015
When I was nineteen, I cried my way to one of the worst headaches of my life. It was the night before I was to start a full time art class – a program called Studio Project. I had been uncertain about signing up, having always doubted my ability to draw (though still enthusiastic to create). Beyond attending various types of classes and critiques, students were required to spend at least four hours a day working in the studio.
Read MoreK.E. MacLeod
May 2015
We spend so much time in our lives listening to spoken words. It is how infants learn to talk. It provides guidance, information, rebuke, praise, provokes thought, and entertains. And, very often, it is how we first understand that those inky squiggles on pale paper are a kind of magic we can have for ourselves.
Read Moreby Noelle Sterne
May 2015
You meticulously study the publication’s guidelines. You follow them precisely. You draft and redraft your submission. But . . . the rejections pour in relentlessly. You moan, scream, swear, and fling around the house, ready to throw in the sponge and throw out your keyboard.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
April 2015
I taught a class at the University of Washington last quarter and had to learn a computer program called Canvas. I had to call the IT folks a couple of times to find out how to do something, and what I discovered is that the language they speak in IT is not quite conversational English.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
April 2015
When my youngest son was three years old, at the suggestion of his concerned preschool teacher, we agreed to a state assessment of his “needs.” But after the evaluation, the specialist’s observations sounded like a scientific field log – as though she’d been in the bushes with binoculars. The subject thumped his chest repeatedly and ran back and forth.The more she shared, the clearer it was that the observed facts were only leading her further from understanding him.
Read Moreby Victoria C. Leo
April 2015
You know how suddenly it can strike. Sometimes with a creeping paralysis, sometimes like the blow of Thor’s Hammer. You can’t write. You can force yourself to go through writing exercises, but the clear, beautiful, inspired prose or poesy that you are used to just won’t come. You get panicked; it doesn’t go away.
Read Moreby Carol Coven Grannick
April 2015
The day I stopped caring whether or not I ever got a book contract was the day I began to be the writer I wanted to be.
I’d had sporadic publications of poetry, articles, and essays, but began writing for children consistently in 1999. I’d fallen in love with picture books and middle grade novels, and my first story was accepted immediately for publication.
Read Moreby Claire Gebben
April 2015
At the age of eighteen, I entered Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a declared psychology major. In truth, I wanted to study creative writing, but my parents had a different idea. They’d pay my college tuition, they said, as long as I majored in something practical, something that would land me a job when I graduated.
Read Moreby Philip Donlay
March 2015
I can remember clearly how much uncertainty I felt when it came time to write Aftershock. Though it was the fifth in my series, the first four had been written over a span of ten years. I wrote when and where I could while I was still working as a professional pilot and traveling the world. This was going to be different. Change had happened, and I didn’t particularly like the concept. I had one summer to write what would hopefully become the next Donovan Nash thriller.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
March 2015
The other day, I rewatched one of my father’s favorite movies – the 1965 film A Thousand Clowns. It stars Jason Robards as nonconformist, anti-establishment television writer, Murray Burns, who has recently quit his job at The Chuckles the Chipmunk Show.
Read Moreby Annette Gulati
March 2015
Discouraged? Ready to give up writing forever?
Don’t quit until you’ve tried a positive list! I began my own list out of desperation. I needed to know whether it was all worth it. Whether I should continue writing. Whether anything positive had come out of the years I’d put into my career.
Read Moreby Jamie Goldberg
March 2015
This past summer I spent eight nights in a psychiatric hospital. I was newly diagnosed with bipolar disorder and in the throes of a severe, debilitating, and often hilarious case of mania.
My hospitalization was frightening and surreal, an experience I hope to never repeat. There were only two things that I looked forward to everyday: taking a shower and getting snacks before bed-time.
Read More