Many authors are recognizable from a single sentence: William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Ernest Hemingway, just to name a few. We know their work because they have a distinct author’s voice. “To be, or not to be: that is the question.” -Shakespeare“A...
Editor’s Note: This is a guest article from Helen Sedwick. Writers worry about using real people’s names in fiction. Even memoirists and nonfiction writers identify people by name and worry about the ramifications. Can writers model characters after real...
By Judith Briles Not a week goes by where authors I’m working with or at places that I’m speaking at, don’t ask this question: Do you have any quick tips for getting unstuck in writing? My answer has multiple components, but it starts with one word: Yes. We all...
Every New Years I talk to authors who have big writing and publishing plans for the new year. And yes, as you know, most of them never pan out. Does that happen to you, too? This is all too common, and I think it’s partly due to an assumption many of us have...
My mission as a book coach is to help writers write the best books they can, which means paying attention to: the macro elements (the story or argument the book makes) the micro elements (the words on the page) the emotional realities of the writing life (the habits...