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That question comes to me at every event I appear at. Especially once a book comes out, like of late with the release of Murdered in Craven and Burned in Craven. The non-writer thinks that I finished the latest book just a week or two ago, and then someone put it on Amazon for me, sending me copies to sell on the side. I never make fun of their logic, but I do like to clarify. When a book is released, I’m usually finishing up writing another. That surprises so many. In this case, I already sent the next Edisto book to the publisher, and have cracked the wrapper on the next one, having written a couple thousand words of the story. Usually it’s only then that they realize that I do this for a living. This isn’t about writing when some fictitious muse hits. It’s about writing everyday. I know I preach that ad nauseum, but whenever I’m interviewed and asked, “What advice do you have for new writers?” . . . I always say the same thing. Write every day. Show up to work. Of course I’m working on a book. I’m always working on a book. I have three books in More

In 2020, I wrote a personal essay that I just couldn’t get published. The worst part was that I couldn’t figure out why. My essay had, as far as I could tell, all the hallmarks of a publishable piece. It told a unique story (about my first same-sex crush at 25, an age when I thought I was supposed to have my sexuality figured out). I’d worked through a draft with a writing coach. I’d revised it until it shone. But no one wanted to buy it. Editors weren’t even responding to my pitches. Maybe I needed more publication credits. Maybe I needed connections, or to learn some secret handshake. Only half joking, I told one of my friends that the piece was cursed. It wasn’t cursed, though. The problem had nothing to do with the essay. The problem was the pitch. So I analyzed my pitching, and these three tactics changed my writing life. Research (and read!) publications. My early pitches failed for the most basic of reasons: I wasn’t reading the magazines I was pitching. I looked for markets that accepted personal essays without thinking about what type of personal essay they liked to publish. One of the More

It doesn’t matter if you’re a freelance journalist, corporate ghostwriter, romance novelist, or free-verse poet, to build and maintain an income stream from your writing, you must proactively market your brand or service. The tools for doing so are always evolving. Twenty years ago, the key advice was to maintain a website and mailing list. Fast forward 10 years, and the purported must-have was an active blog. Now, the push is for social media. Marketing eats up time that could otherwise be spent writing. And adopting new tools and abandoning the old doesn’t necessarily save time. Thankfully, an effective middle-ground exists. Invest in online real estate, and make sure all roads lead home. Paying for a domain, web hosting, and email marketing software is a wise investment. “Email marketing is a core component of any digital marketing campaign and one of the least expensive, most effective ways to get your message out there,” Gadjo Sevilla wrote in PCMag’s “The Best Email Marketing Software.” Why spend any money when you can use social media for free? Because “free” still comes at a cost. Few social media platforms allow you to export a list of followers, so your connection to that audience is More

I tremendously admire people who regularly journal, and those who have journaled since they were young amaze me most of all. I love journaling, but I do not do it. At lest not often. I think a lot depends on how you want to use journaling, or why you feel the need to journal. I, for one, write for pages when I journal. I’ve spend hours journaling, only to get weeks or months into one and rip it up for the trash. To me, journaling is being raw and real with deeply felt feelings. And when I think about being gone one day and my family reading them, I worry the words will alter their opinion of me, hurt their feelings, or realize they didn’t know me at all. Yeah, I’m talking that raw. The feelings we all feel when we know nobody else can hear our thoughts. There are five cases in which I journaled and kept the words. They are in my hope chest and on my book shelf. 1) A daily journal limited to five lines per day that I kept in middle/high school for several years. I haven’t even read them since I wrote them, but More

Last year, as the pandemic zapped the joy out of the holidays, four author friends and I joined forces to pour our energy into a positive project and keep our writing flowing. What started as a small side venture has now become a big, beautiful book filled with five novellas meant to lift spirits this holiday season. IT’S A WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS hit shelves October 12. This project was a first for me in many ways. It was my first time to write a novella, my first time to self-publish, and my first time collaborating with a team of five authors. I’ve learned a lot along the way, and I’m happy to share some tips with you. Lesson #1: Many hands make for light work.  As a traditionally published author, I quickly learned that self-publishing involves countless steps. It was helpful to be able to divide and conquer the endless to-do list from start to finish. We each found our niche and focused on tasks that fit our skillset. After each of us wrote our novella, Janyre Tromp and I each took the drafts through developmental and line edits before passing it to copyeditor and proofreader. Lynne Gentry took over the creation and More

A writer recently asked me to review her memoir. She’d been through an incredible journey in her life, and I had to admit the experience amazed me. She’d already tried self-publishing a few years ago and had gotten scammed by an editor before also learning that not all self-publishers are created equal. A mutual friend introduced her to me, assuring the lady that I was an expert and could solve all her issues. We held a long conversation by phone. As I predicted, she wanted to talk story, trying to validate her story and assuming publishing the easier part. She kept wanting to talk about herself. This is very common with new writers. After a long time, I offered to send her an email listing suggestions on writing and publication, and explaining the differences between self-publishing and traditional. But she wanted me to read her work. Over and over she asked. After she prodded pretty darn hard, becoming quite the pest in subsequent contacts, I offered to review two chapters. I took way more time with it than expected, but I gave her a couple hours of my time in hope it enthused her in the right direction. Instead, she More

Eight years ago, I started writing after a break of more than a decade. I had last worked as a features writer for a thriving mid-sized newspaper. But so much had changed! Slowly, I began finding my way through the confusing maze that is freelance writing. Today, I have recurring writing assignments at several local and regional magazines, I review books for Publishers Weekly, and I have written personal essays for online sites such as Grown & Flown.  These are the steps that took me from pondering to getting paid. 1. Research the kind of freelancer you want to be: content market writer, book reviewer, blogger, magazine feature writer, book author? Each path requires different experience. Take the time to choose the one that fits best with your skill-set and goals. I recommend Jane Friedman’s book: The Business of Being a Writer . She gives a detailed overview of the many ways to make a living writing. I will say that deciding what to say “yes” to has been difficult for me. I have filled in for weekend news reporters, worked as a food writer, taught cooking classes, penned a free monthly newsletter, written magazine feature stories, blogged for local businesses and started a Middle Grade novel. Only in the past year More

Just a week ago, I met a young woman attempting to complete a novel. She was in a writer’s group, but leery of who was reading her work, fearful of someone stealing her work . . . and her idea. I explained to her that very few people have the guts to steal someone’s work verbatim. It’s too easy these days to prove who was the first one to write it. But as for the idea, you can have ten writers with the same idea and still wind up with ten entirely diverse books. Most of a story is not in the plotting or storyline but more about the storytelling voice of the author. t’s HOW you tell a story that matters. But the reality is that nobody thinks your story is very good until it is published and IS PROVEN to be good. People don’t want to copy what isn’t already popular. When you, as a writer, are on the same level as other writers attempting to break in, nobody sees each other’s work as good . . . yet. Also, if someone steals your work, consider this: 1) It’s easy to prove you had it first. 2) The More

Half the job of writing books is promoting them. There are many ways to promote a book, but book blogs have become increasingly influential to potential readers. One of the more visible and easier-to-break-into ways to promote a book with an influential book blogger is by guest posting on their site. And double score if they will pay you to post. Why Guest Posting is Good for Business Easier to Get Than a Review: When you ask a high trafficked blogger to review your book you are essentially asking someone to do a lot of work. They must read a book and then write a review. Guest-posts are the opposite. You do the work, the planning, the writing, the editing, and they get content without having to lift a finger. You’ll Make Connections: In the process of pitching and publication, you’ll email back and forth with this blogger. Once they know you, they know you. I have gone back to bloggers I’ve done guest-posts for and they’re always willing to work with me again. Maybe that big blogger who didn’t review your first book will review your second since you’ve worked together before. Where to Guest-Post Not all reading focused blogs are More

“We are born without choosing to, to parents we haven’t chosen, into bodies and borders we haven’t chosen, to exist in a region of spacetime we haven’t chosen for a duration we don’t choose. As physicists know, we don’t choose the particular atoms that constellate our particular selves or the neural configurations that fire our consciousness. In consequence, as James Baldwin knew, we don’t even choose whom we love. But amid our slender repertoire of agency are the labels we choose for our labors of love — the works of thought and tenderness we make with the whole of who we are.”                   ~Maria Popova, founder of Brain Pickings, now The Marginalian  So much of our existence is out of our control, and if we think too hard about that, we would fret ourselves silly. And in today’s current events, social chaos, and concerns for personal safety and worth, we struggle to define ourselves and what gives us not only satisfaction, but also peace. What we create and how we impact those we come in contact with are within our control. We might not be able to direct how folks behave around us, More