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How Do You Present Yourself To The World?

We’ve talked about branding and how important it is to present yourself professionally online through your website, blog, Tweets, and Facebook page. But what about in person? How do you present yourself to the world? Are you the kookie artist with the wild hair and the scrappy jeans? The clean-cut professional who wears twin sets […]

What is your writing process?

My last post got me thinking about different ways to begin a project. When I’m advising new writers on how to begin a memoir, I tell them to think of an event and just sit down and write it as a scene (or in essay form if they aren’t ready yet to write scenes). Then […]

Are you a slow writer or a fast writer?

I’m continually amazed by stories like Tawna Fenske’s who “In the last eight years [has] written nine full manuscripts and six partials.” Whoa! In the last eight years I have written exactly ONE memoir and revised the hell out of it and still haven’t finished it. Sure, I earned an MFA, got married, and had […]

12 Ways to Overcome Writer’s Block

Many people think they never get writer’s block. They see writer’s block as this weird disease that only people like Hemingway got once they had published ten books and had run out of things to say. But almost every writer I know has days when she sits down at her computer and doesn’t want to […]

Link Love

Links!

The Wall Street Journal has a great article about vanity press going digital.

Meg Waite Clayton has a great series of posts on how writers get started. Start with Part I and read all six!

After the New Yorker released its 20 Under 40 list (I’m honored to know three of them—Daniel Alarcón, Yiyun […]

My Writing Journey

Some of my earliest memories are of my mom and dad reading books—my dad political fiction and biographies and my mom historical fiction and romance novels. I think my mom spent every minute she wasn’t cooking a meal or cleaning the house lying in bed with a book. At the age of six I remember […]

Personal Branding

When I was a kid, I ate a lot of peanut butter, always creamy smooth Jif. I didn’t like Skippy or any other brand. Only Jif. When I moved to Paris, this small American grocery store run by a Lebanese couple near my apartment was the only place I could find peanut butter, but it […]

What Aren’t We Happy?

This isn’t exactly a post about writing, but most of us want to be happy. In fact, I’d venture to say that EVERYONE wants to be happy. And many of us write because it makes us happy, or because we think getting our books published will make us happy. I was tutoring a student for […]

101 Ways to Avoid Writing

All writers, particularly when they are faced with a difficult scene/chapter to write, have their favorite ways of procrastinating. But for those of you who are tired of procrastinating the same way all the time, and need some new, fresh ideas, I’ve compiled a list to help you in your times of need:

1. Blog […]

Self-Sabotage Report

Okay, who did their homework? Did you keep track of the times you sabotaged your writing and the times you almost did, but chose not to? Here’s my report from Monday and Wednesday of last week and Monday of this week:

Monday 1. Went running instead of writing, but compromised and did a short run. […]