Blog
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
Writing Craft Books that Shaped My Journey: Save the Cat!
Learning the Language of Story When I first read Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder, I was about a year or two into writing my first novel. Like many aspiring writers, I had spent most of my life consuming stories without fully understanding how they worked. I didn't know...
Writing Craft Books that Shaped my Journey
Innocence or Ignorance? Early in my writing journey, nearly eighteen years ago, I didn’t have a road map. I had a story I loved, a stack of library books, and the kind of earnest determination that makes you believe you can figure out anything if you squint hard...
Belonging, Not Bravery: Craft for Storytellers
There’s a familiar pattern in stories about disabled characters — one we’ve all seen, whether in classic literature, modern YA, or blockbuster films. Think of Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol, whose disability exists mostly to inspire generosity. Or Beth in Little Women,...
Five Disability Models: A Writer’s Wrap‑Up
When you’re just starting out with photography, you don’t automatically know how a wide‑angle lens stretches space or how a telephoto lens pulls distant mountains close. You’re experimenting—pointing the camera, clicking the shutter, discovering what happens. And it’s...
6 Tiny Tools for Overwhelmed Writers
Some weeks, writing feels like trying to light a match in a windstorm. Even if you get a spark, it’s extinguished before you can feel its warmth or transfer it to the waiting kindling. It can feel like an exercise in futility. Why even bother? But what happens, then?...