Kathryn Craft Turning Whine into Gold Continuing to mine Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements for wisdom applicable to writers, we come to number two—and it’s a doozy. Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When […]

Gwen Hernandez A few years ago, I ended a 15-year marriage to Microsoft Word and hooked up with a younger, sexier writing program: Scrivener. My graduate thesis took the shine off my romance with Word, but it was my foray into fiction that finally killed the relationship. That’s because Scrivener understands my needs in a […]

Susan Spann For many writers, the author-agent relationship is confusing, and even frightening. Sometimes, authors forget that agents are people (just like us) instead of literary krakens who feed on authors’ hopes and dreams. The author-agent relationship is a partnership. Like any business arrangement, it can lead to great success or crater into the ground […]

By Kristen Lamb For those of you who have submitted before, ever wonder how an agent can ask for the first 20 pages and still reject your book? Did you ever wonder if the agents really read these pages? How can they know our book isn't something they want to represent with so little to […]

I don’t usually enter contests, but I decided to go all out this year. During the past two months I’ve redefined my understanding of the experience from both the judging and entrant viewpoints. I hope this post will help you consider whether entering contests is in your best interest at this point in your career. […]