Writing Tips

I enjoy reading well-written books where there are earth-shattering secrets, a race against the clock, harrowing twists and turns, lives constantly under threat. But I don't have an itch to create one.

From Writer's Relief staff: It’s hard to be patient when you’ve sent out a query letter and still haven’t heard back from your literary age...

Like every other published writer in the universe, people I meet at parties inevitably tell me they want to write. They launch into describing their novel or short story or business book idea and I break in gently (I hope) to ask, "When do you write?"

If you want to write a novel, here's what you do: write. Just write, with no worry or care about how it will come out.

When writers say they have writer's block, a normal, unremarkable part of the writing process becomes debilitating.

No matter how long you've been writing, you've probably experienced that panic-induced paralysis known as writer's block. If you want to tame the symptoms of this debilitating condition, here are some home remedies to try.

Charles Dickens used to say that after a morning of writing one of his novels, the characters in the book would clutch at his coattails, demanding to be heard, when he later went out for his afternoon walk. I know exactly what he means.

The next time you begin conceptualizing your crime story's villain, don't be afraid to mine your own feelings. Down deep, below the surface. It's where the motherlode of characterization, and all the narrative gold that results, lies hidden.

From Writer's Relief Chances are that you’ve technically been writing since you learned to write the alphabet on goofy, oversized lined paper bac...

If your résumé sports typos, what's the potential employer going to think? That you're suddenly going to pay more attention to detail once you get the job? Probably not.

Over time, my writing has become less and less about me. What I have discovered is that the further I move from myself, the richer my writing has become.

Aspiring authors are sometimes willing to shell out thousands for writing workshops and MFA programs, but according to Kurt Vonnegut, the late politic...

Now, maybe some writers can write to a formula, can churn out books that try to catch the cultural mood, books that mimic best sellers, but I suspect most authors are like me: We write the books we want to.

From Writer's Relief staff: At some point, all writers have zero publication credits. Although we have no evidence, we suspect that even Stephen Ki...

From Writer's Relief: The books we read as children were written to teach us important lessons about various topics including friendship and bodily...

Prolific writers learn to lose themselves nonjudgmentally in their work, trusting that their skills, community, and the writing process itself will get them where they need to go.

Can't find the time to write? Life is short. Stop with the angst, already. If you're not writing, you don't really want to. Go find something that yanks your chain. Do that, and leave us writers alone.

Unfortunately, many would-be memoirists stumble on the same writing hurdles: if only it wasn't so tough to begin, figure out a plot line, recreate conversations you had five months or five years ago, and keep it all interesting until arriving at "the end."

I think, like with a partner, when you have the right material, there's a magic click, and you fall in love -- whether it takes six books or sixteen years on one book. Maybe that's how long it takes. As long as it takes to feel the click, and have someone else agree.

From Writer's Relief staff: Writers who are in the process of submitting their work to agents and editors tend to worry about idea theft. How m...