First off, what is beta reading? Not everybody thinks of this service the same way. For me, beta reading means outlining my impression of a story in a 3-4 page report. Characters (development and arcs), pacing, and the “big picture” are usually my three areas of focus. Sometimes called a “reader’s report” or “manuscript review,”…
Snow Horror That Will Make You Shiver
Snow horror embraces the cold. Isolation. Howling winds. The stark silence of a white, winter landscape. It forces protagonists to take shelter or brave the bleakest weather nature has to offer. This oddity list from the Author-Oddity Newsletter thrusts you into a frozen lake of horror book recs and other uncanny content. Mind your firewood….
How to Give Feedback on Creative Writing
Maybe it’s a cousin with his first short story. Your quiet aunt who finally finished her draft of a romance novel. Your college roommate with a manuscript about aliens. Whatever the case, giving feedback can be as intimidating as receiving it. After a decade-plus of practice giving and receiving feedback, I’ve found the following rules…
Ms. Wolownik’s New Assistant
Here’s my entry for the Official Kidlit #FallWritingFrenzy! Writers select one image to inspire a 200-word story. My image is below! Ms. Wolownik’s New Assistant Ms. Wolownik’s house looks like a rotten potato. It’s brown and white, and nobody can tell mold from paint. Its roof sags. Vines from overgrown plants spill out the windows….
Writing My First Query Letter
Writing my first query letter has been transformative. I have lived the life of a phoenix. Taken my beak to shell. Swelled with the glory of flight. Burned into ashes. And then, in a chorus of mystical chemistry, I remade myself. Eh, in short, it was really effin’ hard. Here’s my personal path from zero…
Feb. 2020’s #PitMad
My second #PitMad! My first #PitMad, back in December of 2019, I was a wide-eyed fawn, brimming with hope and anxiety. You can read about that (and my favorite pitches) at my first To Pitch Madly post. This round, however, I was ready. TweetDeck posted my pitches for me, so I could respect some limitations…
How Do You Finish a Story?
How do you know a story is done? Or if not a “story,” a piece of writing—your flash fiction, your novella, your book. How do you know when it’s a ready, submission-worthy, finished piece? Reading the classics in high school, and even in college, I had this underlying assumption that every poem, every novel, was…
My Sister’s Heart Transplant
TL;DR: My sister got a heart transplant. Please be an organ donor. Click this link: https://www.donatelife.net/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━√v^√v^√ ❤️️ In December of 2018, my sister’s heart failed. No warning. She was 21 years old. It was a rare genetic hiccup. Doctors saved her life that December…but at a cost. Her body became, in a sense, battery…
Dec. 2019’s #PitMad
I did #PitMad! My first rodeo. On December 5th, I Twitter-binged for ~12 hours. Aaaand when logged off at 8 p.m., my eyeballs about rolled out of my skull. Took an hour for depth perception to return… What’s PitMad? It’s a Twitter event! Writers “pitch” their finished books to agents, who follow the #PitMad hashtag….
Five 50-Word Stories
This year, Every Writer’s 50-word horror story contest exploded. Over 4,000 entries. From the website, it looks like the wild popularity brought some drama too: The comments were all still up, last I checked. Eh, coupling a $500 prize with no limit on the number of submissions was… ambitious. But hey, the winners are posted:…