How I Built a Writing Habit That Finally Stuck
For years I treated writing like a special occasion. I waited for the right mood, the empty afternoon, the surge of inspiration that would carry me through a thousand effortless…
What a Writing Portfolio Should Actually Show an Editor
When I assembled my first portfolio, I made the mistake nearly every writer makes. I gathered everything I had ever published and dumped it onto a single page in reverse…
The Quiet Craft of Revising Your Own Work
The first draft is where you discover what you want to say. Revision is where you finally say it. For a long time I confused the two, treating revision as…
Finding a Voice That Sounds Like You on the Page
Of all the questions writers ask, the one about voice may be the most anxious. New writers want to know how to find their voice, as though it were an…
Turning a Private Experience Into a Personal Essay Worth Reading
The personal essay is a deceptively difficult form. On the surface it looks like the easiest kind of writing, because the subject is your own life and you are the…
What I Wish I Had Known Before Working With Editors
The relationship between a freelance writer and an editor is one of the most important professional relationships a writer will have, and almost no one teaches you how to navigate…
Reading Like a Writer to Sharpen Your Own Craft
Most readers move through a book the way a passenger moves through a landscape, taking in the view without thinking about the engineering that makes the journey possible. Writers cannot…
Working Through the Resistance When the Words Won’t Come
Every writer knows the particular dread of the blank page, the morning when the words refuse to arrive and the cursor blinks accusingly at the top of an empty document.…