Nonfiction

A foxlike creature wears an indigo hat and cape in a dark, starry forest. It is snowing.

Writing Advice of the Week: Make Sense of the Self-Edit

Reading Time: 9 minutes An ambition to write or edit a book without clear and quantifiable goals and a path to achieve those goals — whatever that looks like for each of us — is just a wish. And wishes don’t write drafts. Getting back on track doesn’t need to come with a headache, though.

Writing Advice of the Week: Get Consistent to Boost Creativity

Reading Time: 8 minutes If you find yourself spinning your writerly wheels without gaining traction, it may be time to step back from the project at hand. But this doesn’t mean you stop writing. Instead, it’s time to learn about storytelling, content structure, or other aspects of writing from life itself.

Writing Advice of the Week: Intention Goes A Long Way

Reading Time: 7 minutes We’re just over halfway through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and if you’re anything like the authors with whom I work, you may be hitting that mid-novel slump. And getting beyond the slump becomes the primary goal. So, how do you keep writing when the writing is hard?

AI-Gen monster with horns is surrounded by books while eating a meal by candlelight

Writing Advice of the Week: Characters Are People Too

Reading Time: 4 minutes One of the most common bits of advice given to authors is to humanize their characters. Give them flaws. Dreams. Fears. Desires. Yada, yada, yada. But if you’ve filled out character profile sheets, you know how little value this piece of advice actually provides.

Writing Advice of the Week: Get Out of Your Own Way

Reading Time: 3 minutes Whether it’s imposter syndrome that has you down, the stress of balancing writing against all the other things we do each day, feeling a lack of inspiration, or something else, I want to help you get out of your own way so you can complete your story and gain that coveted sense of achievement of having crossed off “write a book” from your bucket list.

This week’s top writing advice from around the web for Oct. 22, 2023

Reading Time: 10 minutes National Novel Writing Month is just around the corner and many of us are ideating or planning for the big 50K. But if you find yourself doing anything at all except what you want to get done within the next week and a half, check out these articles about balancing priorities and meeting goals and pick up a few tips to get through writer’s block, too.

This week’s top writing advice from around the web for Sep. 24, 2023

Reading Time: 11 minutes I subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. This week, we’ve got lots of advice about running Kickstarters and Amazon categories — as well as over 100 other articles, podcasts and videos about productivity, writing, and marketing.

This week’s top writing advice from around the web for Aug. 13, 2023

Reading Time: 8 minutes I subscribe to more than 180 writing advice sites and YouTube channels and lovingly pick the best posts from this previous week for your edification. Today’s list has 73 articles, podcasts and videos that cover pretty much anything an author needs to know, from staying motivated, to creating scenes, to marketing books.

Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for Aug. 4, 2023

Reading Time: 15 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top ten free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a fantasy western, a battle between witches and vampires set in a small town in Australia, a sexy telepathic alien, and a convent of nuns fighting evil with their magic powers.