Writing Tools
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Writing ToolsWriters on Writing
The Red Bandana
Ann Packer
I’ve recently finished a novel—truly finished, as in it’s departed copyediting and headed for page proofs—and I find myself in a familiar...
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Writing ToolsWriters on Writing
One Thing I Never Learned in Workshop
Victor Lavalle
A few days later he called me up. He sounded dazed. He’d been writing his script and quickly noticed a pattern. In the first panel his characters...
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Writing ToolsWriters on Writing
The Most Important Words
Dawn Raffel
I’ve been an editor for a very long time—let’s say several lifetimes in dog years—and I’ll let you in on a secret
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Writing ToolsWriters on Writing
On the Search for Great Fiction
Stefan Merrill Block
Until the day I queried my agent, I was a closeted writer. I had this vaguely superstitious and probably self-defeating belief that to admit out...
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Writing ToolsWriters on Writing
Writing Dos and Don'ts
Marie-Helene Bertino
Don’t brag. Be nice. Anyone worth his or her salt talent-wise is humble and kind. This is because they understand they’ve been given a gift...
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Writing ToolsWriters on Writing
How To Write A Novel: The Short Version
Gabriel Roth
You start by thinking about all the things a novel should do: tell a compelling story, create vivid characters and reveal them in all their particularity...
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Writing ToolsWriters on Writing
The "It" Factor
Fiona Maazel
Everyone asks me what it takes to be a writer. Well, not everyone, since in fact most people don’t care about us writers
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Writing ToolsWriters on Writing
To Plot or Not?
Terese Svoboda
I don’t plot. I started out as a poet. You don’t need plot in poetry, you have the page, all that dramatic white space, the ends of lines...
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Writing ToolsWriters on Writing
The Roots of Obsession
Darcy Steinke
When I was a little girl, if the teacher called on me to read, it took me ages to get through a paragraph. My face flushed bright red, my vocal chords constricted
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Writing ToolsWriters on Writing
Facing the “You’re a Failure” Voice
Caroline Leavitt
Someone recently asked me in an interview, “How do you obliterate that voice inside of you that tells you you’re a failure as a writer?