Kate Moretti Congratulations! You published a book. It’s out there in the world, all new and shiny, bouncing like the newborn its constantly compared to. The hard part is over, right? Um… well this is awkward. Maybe you watch Amazon rank or your Bookscan data or if you’re lucky, get numbers from your publisher and […]

Ellen Meister Churlish. Mean. Difficult. Insensitive. When I first got the idea to introduce the acid-tongued Dorothy Parker to social media, I had no idea I would soon be using those adjectives to describe Facebook. It started in early 2011. I was working on a new novel that resurrected the great 1920s literary wit as […]

Kennedy Ryan I don’t garden. Not even a little bit. My thumbs are so black they are charred, but even I know weeds in a garden cannot be tolerated. This principle, this image of an overrun garden guides me as I think about my life. More specifically, as I manage my heart. One definition of […]

Densie Webb I recently read a blog post titled something to the effect “You Don’t Need Support to Write.” I couldn’t disagree more. Writing in a vacuum, without someone to give you honest feedback, occasionally shake their pompoms in your face or send you emails with lots of exclamation points congratulating you on your latest […]

Holly Robinson I'm in a semi-comatose state after crashing through the first draft of a novel in six months to meet my editor's deadline. Not that I'm complaining. I've been struggling to get to this point in my career for over twenty-five years. After earning a degree in biology, I started writing fiction and went […]