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Five Things I’ve Learned About Memoir Writing

1. Your protagonist (you) should be 80-90% sympathetic with only a few flaws.

I used to think that the more flawed a character was, the more people would be able to relate to him/her. I quickly learned that too many flaws make a character unlikable. Readers don’t want to read 200-300 pages about a […]

Do Not Disturb

I’m on a private writing retreat this week—private meaning just me, my laptop, a lot of Coke Zero, and my manuscript. Oh, and Siri. I use Siri to send text messages while driving more than anything else. I rarely ask her where I can find a yoga studio or a place to eat because […]

Author Interview: Melanie Gideon

Today, I am honored to share with you an interview with the bestselling author of The Slippery Year, Melanie Gideon. Gideon’s debut novel, Wife 22, is out TODAY, and the best way I can describe it is Bridget Jones for the Facebook generation. Gideon will be reading tonight at A Great Good Place for […]

A Perfect Eulogy

My friend Shanthi Sekaran, author of The Prayer Room, calls this piece Imperfect Eulogy. I disagree. I think it’s perfect. This piece was first published on Zyzzyva’s blog and is dedicated to Elmer Morrissey.

April 14, 2012. On the 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s collision with an iceberg, the eight crew members of the Low […]

Ben Fountain: Author Interview

Today I had the pleasure to meet Ben Fountain, who came to lunch at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. Ben’s first novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, debuted this month. His short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, won a PEN/Hemingway award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, a Whiting Writers […]

Why You Shouldn’t Give a $#!% about Fashion Models

As many of you know, I am in the final throes of revising a memoir about the modeling industry. So every now and then I sneak a post about fashion between all my posts about writing and publishing and social media. And this is one such post.

One thing I have to thank the modeling […]

Hemingway and I: So Different and Yet So … Different

There are some obvious ways in which Hemingway and I differ:

He was male; I’m female He’s dead; I’m alive He was one of the greatest writers who ever lived; I’m a writer.

But then there are some not-so-obvious ways in which we differ, too, and I discovered those while reading The Paris Wife by […]

Should You Hire A Social Media Coach?

I teach social media and blogging classes here at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. In these classes, I explain to writers how to write a great blog post, how to market their services through their blog, Facebook and Twitter, how to create a community of enthusiastic fans of their work, and how to manage their […]

When Should We Limit Literary License?

An interesting discussion took place over lunch here at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto last week. The topic: literary license. The talk was sparked by The Lifespan of a Fact, a book co-authored by essayist John D’Agata, who teaches at the University of Iowa, and his former fact checker, Jim Fingal, that was published by […]

8 Secrets to a Successful Writers’ Group

Writers’ groups, also called critique groups, can be invaluable resources for writers. They provide the structure and support of an MFA workshop without the high cost of tuition. But not all writer’s groups are equal. Get in the wrong group, and you may do more harm to your writing than good. How do you know […]