Even though there was a rehearsal dinner, a wedding, a weekend spent upstate visiting my beloved roommate, Thanksgiving, and, at the very end, a very nasty head cold, I survived and WON NaNoWriMo this year! Hurray! I now have a very crappy, embarrassingly awful, but decently plotted 56,000+ word novel (I only wrote 50,000 wordsContinue reading “The Moral of the Story: What I Learned from NaNoWriMo”
Category Archives: Writerly Wednesday
The Cure to Writer’s Block: Tell the Story Behind PostSecrets
Two weeks ago I attended the PostSecret event at Rutgers University, Camden campus with my younger sister. For those of you who don’t know, PostSecret is a community art project started by Frank Warren a handful of years ago where people send in anonymous postcards inscribed with a secret they’ve never shared before and FrankContinue reading “The Cure to Writer’s Block: Tell the Story Behind PostSecrets”
Submission Fee: $100; Getting Published: Priceless?
Perhaps I’ve ignored this for a while because I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but writing is an expensive profession. The physical materials–paper, pens, ink cartridges–are reasonable, but the money you have to shell out to get your work published makes a pretty significant dent in the bank account. I’ve started keeping trackContinue reading “Submission Fee: $100; Getting Published: Priceless?”
Television Rots Your Writer’s Brain
The other night my boyfriend and I set up on the couch in the family room; he to work on some accounting homework, and me to work on a short story. Then my mom and sister came in and turned on the television. I felt like I was in a psychology experiment. For some reasonContinue reading “Television Rots Your Writer’s Brain”
And the Versatile Blogger Award Goes To…
Me! And many other lovely people. First is was bestowed upon Katy and her blog The Storytelling Nomad and now she has shared it with twelve other bloggers,, myself included. Thanks Katy! My impression is that it’s like those chain letters we use to tape to our friends doors when we were in elementary schoolContinue reading “And the Versatile Blogger Award Goes To…”
My Burning House Moment: Going Back for the Memories and the Memoir
I live on the coast of Pennsylvania. This means that if New Jersey someday sinks into the abyss of the Atlantic Ocean, I would have beach front real estate (not that I wanted them to get washed away in the hurricane! I’m not heartless!). So for all of you hearing about New Jersey being aContinue reading “My Burning House Moment: Going Back for the Memories and the Memoir”
Organized Writer…Oxymoron?
Are you one of those people who get cold shivers of pleasure when you see the organized shelves ofttimes featured in Real Simple? Or do you break out in a cold sweat? As writers, we’re constantly being lectured about being organized: have a regular writing scheduled, have a regular submission scheduled, have an Excel spreadsheetContinue reading “Organized Writer…Oxymoron?”
Poor Choices: Posting Your Book on Your Blog
Should you post your book chapters on your blog? This is a constant point of debate for bloggers and there are two loyal camps who constantly battle over it. Every time I stumble across another blog pondering the idea, I reiterate my points and I figured that I would announce them once and for allContinue reading “Poor Choices: Posting Your Book on Your Blog”
What NOT to Do When Submitting to Literary Journals
We’ve been over some of these creative writing submission “don’ts” before, but I think that this article, “The Number One Worst Mistake A Writer Can Make When Submitting,” from Writer’s Relief is pretty valuable in that the quotes are from real life editors working for real life publications. It even provides the links to theirContinue reading “What NOT to Do When Submitting to Literary Journals”
Some Unpleasant Truths about Publishing and Self-Promotion
A big theme during the books portion of the NYU Summer Publishing Institute that scared me as a writer was that many publishers were publicly announcing that they would not take on an author–even if they were so in love with their manuscript or book proposal that they wanted to marry it–unless they had aContinue reading “Some Unpleasant Truths about Publishing and Self-Promotion”
Hannah Karena Jones 