One of the main ways that people get a book of poetry published, particularly a first book, is by winning a poetry book contest. There are dozens of these book contests out there. A few years ago, I read for one of them, helping to make the first cut of submissions. It was not an anonymous contest, and the applicants provided short
Category: Writing Matters
Once in a while I’ll hear somebody ask this question. Many writers prefer publishing under their real names, taking full credit and full responsibility for what they spent so much time creating. And that makes a lot of sense! But there are many good reasons to use a pen name, and here are a few of them. If you’re deciding
Here are the books I’ve read and enjoyed lately! I sometimes feel a little self-conscious about how eclectic my reading tastes are, but that’s not going to change, so I should just get over that, right? The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss . I saw Mr. Rothfuss talk at a nerdy convention a couple of years ago, and
Hey friends! I’ve gotten several questions lately about how to punctuate and set up dialogue, and how to avoid repetitions of “he said, she said.” I’m not surprised, because English is weird, even for English speakers. I’m going to share those questions along with the answers here. Let’s dive in! When do I write “said Bryn” and when do
Hey there! Welcome to another writing prompt designed to incorporate into your WIP… though if you just do it as a creative exercise, that’s great too! You don’t have to keep this to twenty minutes. I’m just saying I think you can do it in twenty, and squeeze it right into your lunch hour or bus ride. Set an alarm on
I’m going to do some writing prompts for a while on Mondays and see how they go. I’ll be keeping them nice and quick, because we often forget that we don’t need a huge swath of uninterrupted time in order to write. Even fifteen or twenty minutes is enough to get a little done. Although I’ve always liked the idea of writing
Not too long ago in one of my writer online groups, someone said they were feeling a lot of anxiety about their novel-in-progress, and they asked other people if they sometimes felt the same way. Plenty of people said yes, they did. It’s good for writers to know they’re not the only ones. But then, the conversation took a disturbing