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We aren’t at the point—and I don’t want to reach it—where “miracle” AI software writes our stories for us, and we passively absorb them. Sure, AI can output all sorts of text from prompts and prodding, but the human touch remains essential in story shaping. But some writing software performs brawny labors to structure book-length works: like Scrivener. Whether you write fiction or nonfiction books, Scrivener can take tangled masses of information—character portraits, three-sentence notes, research URLs, images, chapter outlines, chapter drafts, chapters to come—into a coherent layout that not only lets you see what you’ve got, but lets you move everything into ordered arrangements. I recently published a memoir of my crazed years of teenage shoplifting, and Scrivener was the cop with his hand on my shoulder saying, “Wait a minute, son, let’s put everything back on the right shelf.” Because the memoir is made of moments from (gulp) 50 years ago, I couldn’t brush aside my brain cobwebs by myself. I needed to question pals and siblings who were around to witness my crimes about certain details. Many, many details rose to the surface, with detail follow-ups. Many, many emails needed re-confirmation, chopping and crafting. Twelve people in More

Call them bad guys or villains or antagonists, you need them in just about every genre that exists if you want an interesting story. Even nonfiction merits an opposition. For a story to capture readers, it needs adversity. And the bad side has to be every bit as devoted to winning as the good side, or the challenge doesn’t pique interest. Bad guys think they are right in their mission. They believe they are every bit as noble in their quest as the protagonist. To bring out the teeth of a story, whether short or long, historical or contemporary, fiction or nonfiction, the two sides have to balance the scale. Why? If the good guy isn’t being challenged by someone equally as strong, the tale carries no weight. The good guy doesn’t even have to flex all of their muscles or use their brain. The odds are too easy. The good guy has to feel defeated at various stages. The good guy has to fight to think like the bad guy, just like the bad guy is attempting to outthink the good. The good guy has to grow in their efforts, using tools they never used before in order to More

At some point, every writer loses an important file. If you’re lucky, it will be only one file. However, if your computer dies, gets hacked, or falls from a great height, you want to make sure you don’t lose your life’s work. The first time I had a computer die on me, the computer repair shop was able to rescue a majority of my creative writing documents. There would have been no way for me to re-write dozens of poems and story ideas. For the creative works that were not rescued from my computer, I was able to retrieve most of them from literary magazine submission portals, which involved logging on to the platforms and right-click-saving any documents I had uploaded. I am sure there are some ideas of mine that are lost to time. After that experience, I made sure to work smarter through the use of a few simple but important document-saving methods. Cloud-Based Templates You can store templates of important files on a cloud-based drive such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive. If you are a creative writer with a limited number of pieces that you are actively pitching to journals, you can keep those documents More

I received this email from a new FundsforWriters reader. I have paraphrased it a little bit to avoid showing her history. <<First, I love your site. I can’t wait to continue exploring all of the valuable information that you have. I am a new writer not yet published. I have read so much material (books, articles, blogs), you name it, about the craft or writing. Some of them try and convince me that I will write a great novel in 90 days. Others imply that self-publishing is the only way to currently get published. I honestly feel like I am swimming in TOO MUCH information. So, I guess my request would be an article helping new writers maneuver through the slush and read what we really need to get started. I hear your voice, “That is too broad a topic.” Probably so, but if you could just highlight a few that would help.>> My response: You are right. That is too broad a subject. But you are also right in that there is too much information. It’s amazing how many people publish how-to without the teeth behind the lesson. They are more known for their how-to than their actually doing. But More

“You should write about your experiences growing up in a haunted house.” Those were my sister’s words. “You experienced the paranormal more than the rest of us.” She never believed I’d seen the ghost, yet, she saw the value in the story. While I pondered her words, I continued writing my other creative nonfiction – stories about my grandmother (“Personal Notes” Moose Hide Books: 2008), my mother (F-Stop: A Life in Pictures Baico Publishing: 2011), close family friends (The Whistling Bishop Baico Publishing: 2008) and I helped Dad with his memoir. In between, I wrote fiction, but my heart lay in nonfiction, specifically that which you could take reality and tell it in story form, emulating novel fiction, and the ghost story kept churning in my mind. The wise words of my editor, “Memoir sell better than fiction,” coupled with my sister’s urging, resulted in the resurfacing of my childhood memories and the ghost that haunted my nights. The result? Mrs. Murray’s Ghost (Tell-Tale Publishing: 2018) and three other books in The Piccadilly Street Series (book five is in the works). Not all of what I wrote in The Piccadilly Street Series was memoir, at least not in the traditional More

You know the song. The one with the lyric, “Dance like nobody’s watching.” You get the meaning. Let yourself be the real you. You know how you are in the car, alone, when the perfect song you sang to in high school comes on the radio. You belt it out, maybe even attempting harmony. But when we post our writing online, we do so with the idea that someone is waiting to judge. Suddenly we become more homogenized with the others hanging out there, like ourselves, who are weighing what to say so that the audience likes us. We debate with ourselves on how to write something that will garner applause so that we fit in better. We don’t want to run the risk of being too different. We often dumb ourselves down, when the crying shame is that there is a uniquely different person behind that screen, behind that pen, behind that keyboard. The world is crying for sincerity. The world thirsts for people who are themselves. That’s not saying everyone should be their weirdest self. Just that they ought to be true to themselves, and that includes in writing. We too often want to know what’s selling, what’s More

This may come as a surprise, but you don’t have to travel to become a travel writer. Almost everybody lives in or near a town or city that has some points of interest for others. If you’ve lived in your area for a long time, you probably know a lot about its various attractions. That makes you a great resource for others who may be interested in visiting your city or region. It’s also a great opportunity to use your knowledge to break into the field of travel writing without ever having to board an airplane. Lists are a great entry point for new travel writers. Niches are all around you, and you can easily create lists of things to do for each of those niches. Many of the articles I have written and published about where I live – Berlin, Germany – have been very focused list articles. For Paste Magazine, I wrote “Three Two-Wheeled Ways to See Berlin,” which covered ways of getting around in the city that didn’t involve public transportation or a car. iExplore published my article “Berlin Is a Year-Round Halloween Town,” which detailed several local attractions that cater to fans of horror and the macabre. More

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” – British economist Charles Goodhart (Goodhart’s law) This quote says that basically, when you set a goal, and you become hard focused in meeting that goal, you can easily forget what drove you to set the goal in the first place. The measure, so to speak, becomes the details in the goals instead of the original mission. Metrics, for instance. When you set goals in terms of hours, dollars, sales, hits, reviews, and followers, and that’s what you get up in the morning to which to give your attention, you begin chasing the metrics. Your original goal turns murky. In another instance, you may notice what’s popular and think, I can do that. That applies not just to books but also to short pieces, even journalism. You see what is getting attention, say on sites like Medium.com or popular blogs. Or in terms of books, you see the best selling genres and shift gears to write those instead of what you originally started writing. You are chasing success. You are trying to find the easier road, or at least the road someone else has cut out ahead of you. More

The Web abounds with writers who ponder how to develop that proverbial network that’s supposed to represent their 1,000 true fans…those fans who are supposed to make growth possible. Those fans who want anything we have to offer, and tell others about it. In case you are not familiar with the concept, read these articles. You need to know. A 20-Step Process for Finding Your 1,000 True Fans (from 2008) http://www.copyblogger.com/20-steps-1000-fans/ 1000 True Fans? Try 100 (today) https://future.com/1000-true-fans-try-100/ 1000 True Fans (today) https://elitecontentmarketer.com/1000-true-fans/  The logic is that if you could find 1,000 true fans willing to pay $100 a year for your work, you develop a $100,000 income. The theory is over a decade old. Is it still applicable? Of course it is. In some circles, outside that of books, of course, the logic has expanded to finding 100 fans willing to buy $1,000 worth of product in a year, and yes, there are ample examples of products out there where this works. Sports clothing, video games, home interior products learn to use their brand and cater to the repeating customer. The problem with that theory in the publishing industry, however, is that writers cannot create $1,000 worth of product More

Someone recently emailed me, upset that a book contest charged a $70 entry fee. The first prize was a strong four figures, and I knew the credibility of the sponsor. Therefore, I had no problem posting the contest. The complainer called the contest predatory and told me not to respond to their complaint. Apparently they just wanted to vent to me, but I could not let this generalization go. Of course, I replied. Generalizations like this hurt the industry, I said, and went on to state the following. As I teach at conferences and to anyone who will listen, contests that do not charge entry fees are more likely to: not pay out, pay less, attract less quality writing, and be less reliable. Unless there is a deep-pocket sponsor, someone has to come up with the prize money, cost of advertising, and payment to the finalist judges. Having judged many contests, sometimes being paid and sometimes not, I know what it takes to judge a contest that allows book-length submissions. A judge can receive 100+ books in the mail/email to judge in six weeks, and there are often multiple judges. If anyone says there is one judge, that judge is More