Writing

If you're one of those people who always said they would write a novel if only they had the time: this is your moment. As more budding writers self-isolate due to the coronavirus and finally knuckle down on their manuscripts, the publishing industry has already seen a surge in submissions.  Read more

First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts.  Read more

There are so many moving parts an author needs to pay attention to when writing fiction-POV, character development, narrative structure, happy-hour specials-that it's easy to miss the small stuff, the things that we think we instinctively understand and already do very well.  Read more

The first 400 words of my novel, Adjustments, were written mostly to prove to my publisher, who had asked for the story, that I had no novel to write. I was a non-fiction, just-the-facts writer who had read little fiction as an adult, let alone had any interest in writing it.  Read more

When our writing resists us - when it refuses to do as we hope - we often respond with ever more force, pushing it to bend to our will. We ask a friend to tell us which "darlings" to murder. We go through with a red pencil, slashing words.  Read more