Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year, by Kim Liao

From: http://lithub.com/why-you-should-aim-for-100-rejections-a-year Last year, I got rejected 43 times by literary magazines, residencies, and fellowships—my best record since I started shooting for getting 100 rejections per year. It’s harder than it sounds, but also more gratifying. In late 2011, a writer friend was sharing her experiences of having months of uninterrupted writing time at her residencies at the Millay Colony, Ragdale, and Yaddo. I was staggered by her impressive rates of acceptance. You probably have… Read More

There is No Safe Space, by Lisa Cron

From: http://writerunboxed.com/2016/08/11/there-is-no-safe-place I used to have this recurring image in my head. I was outside, on a deserted cobblestone street, in a very dim light, hemmed in by thick fog. I couldn’t see anything except gray. There was a strong current in the air – like a riptide. It was scary. I’d wrapped my arms around a thick concrete post, my feet having already lost touch with the ground. I knew with absolute… Read More

Perfect Counterparts, by Erik Bork

From: http://blog.artella.com/post/141211270456/on-developing-story-ideas-by-pete-docter What makes an audience root for two people to be together? The Save the Cat books have a name for the type of story where the primary external conflict is that two people who are “perfect counterparts” have something big in the way of “living happily ever after.” It’s called “Buddy Love.” And it includes most types of love stories, including the classic “Forbidden Love” (Brokeback Mountain, Twilight, Moulin Rouge) or… Read More

On Developing Story Ideas, by Peter Docter

From: http://blog.artella.com/post/141211270456/on-developing-story-ideas-by-pete-docter “Where do you get your ideas?” This is a question people ask a lot, and frankly it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding about the creative process. For some geniuses like Walt Disney or Miyazaki, their movies show up to them fully formed. Kapow: Dumbo. Pinocchio. Spirited Away. If you’re lucky enough to be born brilliant, ideas just appear all at once in your head. I used to believe this. But here’s the… Read More

Birth vs. Battle, by David Corbett

  From: http://writerunboxed.com/2016/04/12/birth-vs-battle Let me kick things off with blasphemy: Conflict is not the engine of story. Allow me to explain. The longer I teach, the more writing texts I seem to read, if only to find out if someone else has a clearer, simpler, or more insightful way of presenting the material. (To my chagrin, that’s often case. Fortunately, I’m not so old a dog that I’ve forsaken new tricks.) In… Read More

7 Lessons in Outlining, by Jeanne Veillette Bowerman

From: http://www.scriptmag.com/features/balls-of-steel-7-lessons-in-outlining-first-draft-fear-oh-my By Jeanne Veillette Bowerman | October 10, 2013 I have a problem starting scripts. I am a self-proclaimed outline junkie, allowing myself to linger in all the possibilities of characters and conflict for far too long before opening my screenwriting software and diving in. For this new project, I’m trying something new on multiple fronts: I did a rough outline, not as detailed a one as I normally do (the one… Read More

Surviving Nearly There, by Robin LaFevers

Recommended by Maureen McQuerry: A lovely encouraging post for us all – Surviving Nearly There by Robin LaFevers. From: http://www.robinlafevers.com/2014/05/16/surviving-nearly-there One of the hardest stages of your writing journey—one that will take the most dedication, commitment, and self exploration—is the ‘nearly there’ stage. This is the stage where your critique partners love your work, you’re getting personalized rejections from agents or editors and highly complimentary reports from your beta readers, and yet …. Read More

Desperately Seeking Darlings, by Kim Bullock

From: http://writerunboxed.com/2016/01/22/desperately-seeking-darlings-to-murder January 22, 2016 Back in late October, Liz Michalski wrote a post about how her portly manuscript lost an impressive 52,000 words. As someone who writes long and cuts later, I related well to her obsession with chopping adverbs, unnecessary adjectives, and dialogue tags.  I ran that gauntlet myself when the last draft of my manuscript clocked in at 115,000 words. The length wasn’t terrible, but I feared it might be… Read More

7 Ways to Create a Killer Opening Line For Your Novel, by Brian Klems, Jacob Appel

From: http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/7-ways-to-create-a-killer-opening-line-for-your-novel January 9, 2014 Writing the first line to your book is an incredibly daunting task. This is your first opportunity to hook readers in. I remember writing and rewriting the opening line to my humor book OH BOY, YOU’RE HAVING A GIRL over and over again until I finally felt like I nailed it with this: “If you’re a guy and you’ve opened this book, you either have a daughter,… Read More

How Outlining Can Bring Out Voice, by Gabriela Lessa

From:  https://janefriedman.com/2015/08/24/how-outlining-can-bring-out-voice “I got some rejections where the agents said they liked the premise but it lacked voice. How do I fix voice?” As a freelance editor, I hear this question a lot from my clients. It’s something that seems to baffle authors. What exactly is voice? How do you see if your character has a voice? How do you fix it? The whole “it’s a subjective business” thing can be frustrating… Read More