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Writing Dos and Don'ts
Marie-Helene BertinoDon’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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How To Write A Novel: The Short Version
Gabriel RothYou 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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The "It" Factor
Fiona MaazelEveryone 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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To Plot or Not?
Terese SvobodaI 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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The Roots of Obsession
Darcy SteinkeWhen 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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Facing the “You’re a Failure” Voice
Caroline LeavittSomeone 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?
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What Does It Really Mean When People Say Your Character is Unsympathetic?
Christina Baker KlineEver since I started noticing the typos in Nancy Drew books, I’ve loved to edit. In high school I convinced my mother, an overworked English...
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Why Tried and True Advice Can Doom You
John WrayTwo of the most dangerous sinkholes I fell into as a developing writer were very much part of the creative writing dogma of the time, and continue...
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The Thirty-Year Novel
Leora Skolkin-SmithAs part of surviving the long, lonely hours of writing a novel about madness that I was certain would continue to be rejected by publishers...
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Research in Fiction—Necessary But Dangerous
Helen BenedictAs someone who writes both journalism and fiction, I have often struggled with how to balance research and imagination.