Blog
Experience-Hardened Hope: What Autumn Teaches Us About Resilience
I live in the South. Temperatures had been in the 90s the past month. Then last Friday, the high was only 60 degrees. It felt like Mother Nature flipped the switch between summer and autumn overnight. With the cooler weather, I noticed the sunrise arriving a little...
Wonderbook: The Permission Slip Disguised as a Writing Craft Book
By the time I picked up Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer, I had become a devoted student of writing craft. I'd spent years learning about structure, pacing, character arcs, plot points, and story milestones. Books like Story Engineering, Save the Cat!, and Story Genius...
Mash-Ups, Genre Swaps, and Unexpected Voices
At a recent writing conference, an aspiring author asked literary agent, Heidi Gordon, about current market trends. After giving the initial caveats, she answered: "Everyone loves mash-ups right now." She rattled off some intentionally ridiculous examples that got...
The Post-Conference Crash: Keeping Momentum After a Writing Conference
There is a distinct flavor of euphoria that belongs exclusively to the final afternoon of a writing conference. Your notebook is packed with game-changing insights, your chest is buzzing with that kinetic fission of hope, and your heart is full after days of hugging...
Story Genius: Learning Why Characters Believe What They Believe
When I first picked up Story Genius by Lisa Cron, I was in the middle of an intense season of studying story structure. My critique group and I were learning to think like engineers, dissecting manuscripts with terms like Midpoint, First Plot Point, and character arc....
The Fission of Hope: What Writing Conferences Grow
Writing conferences are expensive. Not just financially. They demand time, energy, travel, planning, accessibility advocacy, and often a complicated reshuffling of responsibilities at home. In my recent post, I explored those invisible costs and the barriers many...
Writing Craft Books that Shaped my Journey: Story Engineering
For my first five years as a writer, I focused almost entirely on mastering the craft of prose. After joining SCBWI, I was invited into a critique group made up of an eclectic mix of picture book creators, middle grade authors, and YA novelists. The mentors in that...
The Midnight Tax: When “Productivity” Costs Too Much
A month without a laptop wasn't part of my writing productivity plan. Like most writers, I rely on a carefully built routine. I believe in sustainable productivity, steady progress, and protecting creative energy from the burnout that comes with constant hustle. In...
Writing Craft Books That Shaped My Journey: ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King
I read Stephen King's On Writing early in my writing journey. At the time, I was voraciously searching for writing craft books that might help me understand how stories worked and how writers actually learned their craft. The funny thing is that I had never read a...
The Invisible Costs of Writing Conferences: Working the Edges of the Bell Curve
“The hardest work of a conference happens before we ever arrive.” -Amelia Loken