This outline is adapted from a handout I give to my life writing students. The points made here apply to writing in general as well as to writing our life stories in particular. I. Why should we write? A. Frank McCourt in Writer’s Digest, Feb. ’99, p. 19: “But now I realize that [...]

Every good fiction editor knows that their job is based on how well the author that they are editing knows the fundamentals of good writing. That’s not to say that every client you accept as a book editor should have the skills on par with a professional writer, but there are some fundamentals to good [...]

Travel books are extremely diverse. Some are barely identifiable as travel writing. Gerald Durrell is thought of as an eccentric naturalist but in fact his books are engaging books on travel with a special focus on animal life. The kinds of travel literature, or indeed travel writers, can be broadly categorized. Top of the list [...]

I recently had the pleasure of watching Marc Forster’s film, Stranger Than Fiction, which I found to be a delightfully charming, intelligent comedy written by first-time screenwriter Zach Helm. I give it two guitars up. Way up. (Platonically speaking of course).
It’s about an uptight IRS agent, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), who realizes that his mundane [...]

Back in the days, the games came with only very basic writing to get the user by until the game play had started but today’s gamer requires so much more from their games that they choose. This is where the interactive fiction genre has come into play. For many, this has been the best there [...]

You can learn a lot about what it takes to place a story in an ezine by starting up one of your own.
Last month we started work on a new ezine for writers, which we intended to use to publish high-quality, contemporary fiction, from writers all over the world. We placed a few adverts [...]

Writing a novel is an act of discovering yourself and discovering your potentials – Writing a novel is not as difficult as you might think, and completing a novel is one of the most exciting feelings in the world. many writers say the hardest part of writing a novel is starting it. The problem is [...]

Ask anyone that you meet if they’ve ever had an idea to write a book and I bet that 99% of the time their eyes light up and they say ‘Yes.’
Everyone has numerous wonderful book ideas. My experience and conversations with thousands of people tell me that this is true. The difference between [...]

So you’re an author (or an aspiring author) who has an interest in writing erotic fiction. But many authors worry about using their real name when penning erotic pieces, for several reasons. Several famous authors who at one point, sooner or later in their careers, wrote erotica chose a pen name, including Harlan Ellison and [...]

The two central pillars in effective personal marketing are the establishment of credibility and the quest for exposure. You could have a large business or you could be an independent professional. You could be selling a product or a service. Regardless why you’re marketing yourself, writing a non-fiction book is one of the best ways [...]