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Just Keep Writing

If you’re like me, you write in fits and starts, not everyday like they say we should. I find that I get easily discouraged. I get gung ho about a project, work at it furiously for two months, receive some negative feedback from someone (which can range anywhere from doubts a non-writer friend expresses about […]

Spring Classes at the Grotto

I’ll be teaching two weekend workshops this session at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto:

Edit Yourself (this Sunday, May 20) Social Media Bootcamp (June 10)

These are both really fun, hands-on workshops with tea and snacks included. You can bring your own lunch or buy lunch nearby.

Please spread the word to your writer friends!

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Author Interview: Constance Hale

You may remember Constance Hale, author of Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wicked Good Prose and Vex, Hex, Smash Smooch: Let Verbs Power Your Writing from this guest post she wrote for Writerland back in 2012. But she wasn’t always a language book writer. Constance started by writing poetry in college. Then she penned […]

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

I’ve posted about the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org before but wanted to share this wonderful infographic. I’ll be teaching Blogging 101 at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto beginning this Wednesday for four weeks. Join me! The class will be small, so everyone will get to workshop two blog posts each week.

 

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A Growth Mindset for Writers

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably heard of Carol Dweck and her book Mindset, or maybe Po Bronson’s Nurture Shock, which references Dweck’s research. The theory behind Mindset is that children who adopt a fixed mindset—who believe that their intelligence and abilities are fixed and won’t change—don’t do as well during the middle school and […]

The Imperfect Writing Life

At AWP16 in Los Angeles in March, I went to a fabulous panel called The Imperfect Writing Life with Samantha Dunn moderating and Andre DeBus III (author of House of Sand and Fog and Townie), Carol Edgarian (author of Rise the Euphrates and Three Stages of Amazement), Neil Thompson (director of publishing at Amazon) and […]

Writerland News and Updates

1. WordPress

I have finally moved my entire website into WordPress, so I can update it regularly, and I’m very excited about that! I’ll be posting latest news and events on the Home page and upcoming classes on the Classes page.

2. MailChimp

I’ve also moved the Writerland blog subscription from Feedburner to MailChimp, […]

What Books Made You a Writer?

A colleague at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto asked us today what books made us writers. I think that can be interpreted several ways, but I’m going to take it as: What books inspired me to become a writer? Here are mine, in no particular order:

A Wrinkle in Time—My all-time favorite children’s book, […]

10 Things You Should Take to Every Writers Conference

Photo by Glen Euloth courtesy of Creative Commons

 

I thought I was so prepared at AWP 15 this year, but there were a few essentials I didn’t take that would have made my conference run much smoother:

1. Business cards

I can’t emphasize enough how much you should take a stack of business […]

Edit Yourself, Advanced Blogging, Bay Area Book Festival, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

A few announcements: This week I have two classes open for registration—a six-week Advanced Blogging Workshop and a one-day Edit Yourself workshop. Also, in early June I’ll be teaching a one-day Successful Blogging class at Book Passage in Corte Madera (see below) and participating in a panel about writing communities at the Bay Area Book […]