Sierra Godfrey I am a reader. Yes, I read books, but I mean an agent’s reader. I read requested manuscripts. I read your requested manuscript. Readers are one of the secrets of the industry—most agents utilize them as there are simply too many manuscripts and not enough pairs of eyes. Some agents use one or […]

Kathryn Craft Turning Whine Into Gold To navigate the gauntlet that is publishing today, your best strategy for success can be to embrace your new paradox: you are both artist and businessperson. Why? Because it’s not all business. Your publishing team is well aware that they would not have their salaried jobs without the creative […]

Tasha Seegmiller When I was just starting on my writing journey, I attended a workshop where a children’s book writer and illustrator said something along the lines of, “If you like to do anything besides writing, do that.” Writing is hard. Writing takes grit. But this is the case for lots of things in life. […]

Jamie Raintree I participated in my first National Novel Writing Month event in 2008. I had never written a novel before and had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I'd always loved a challenge. Up until then, I'd only ever written short stories, and any previous novel attempts had stopped at the […]

NaNoWriMo, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, is National Novel Writing Month, where hundreds of thousands of writers gather to bang out many many words in a month. Many writers skip it and many writers treat it as a yearly pilgrimage to Writing Mecca. NaNoWriMo is my birthday present to myself each year. […]