Three times a day, I retrieved a handful of pills from the little blue basket on the kitchen counter. It was 2017, and I was two years into my career as a chronically ill writer. In the eight years after my Behçet’s Disease diagnosis, I’d had plenty of time to rage, cry, and contemplate my situation—how my chronic illness impacted my life, how many medications I needed to be able to live with minimal pain, how I rationed my spoons each week. What I neglected to realize was how obvious my condition was to other people.
Continue readingTag: on writing
Becoming a Working Writer: The First, Terrible Year in Review
In October 2019, I took the plunge. I made my first short-story submission to a paying market. The rejection came twelve days later. It was a higher tier rejection—the best kind, short of one bearing a personal note from the editor. I felt energized. I was—to steal Mur Lafferty’s phrasing—a working writer.
Continue readingHow to Plot Your Novel: 5 Ways to Write Your Bestseller
So you want to write a novel — now what? Well, unless you plan to pull 100,000-plus words from where the sun don’t shine, you’re going to want to do a bit of plotting before you begin. It’s ultimately up to you to decide how to plot your novel, but I’ve picked out five methods you can use to find success as a writer — whatever that means to you.
Continue readingLetters to a Young Writer: A Review
A few writing books have become must-reads for any aspiring English-language novelist: Stephen King’s On Writing, Ursula K. Le Guin’s Steering the Craft, William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. This year, Colum McCann‘s Letters to a Young Writer: Some Practical and Philosophical Advice joins that list. Consisting of 52 essays crammed with no-nonsense advice, Letters is a must-read for any Aspiring Writer. Continue reading
Spunk & Bite: A Review
Whenever younger writers ask me for the best books on the craft, I always recommend The Elements of Style. Yes, it’s stodgy and impractical at times, but it gives new writers a great, rules-based foundation on which to build their careers. Arthur Plotnik‘s Spunk & Bite demolishes that building to construct something bigger and better. Continue reading