Writer Unboxed

Garrison Keillor. Man, I love him and his rich voice booming Good Thoughts to writers every morning on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac. Garrison Keillor thinks publishing as we know it is over. Call me a pessimist, call me Ishmael, but I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a [...]

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Our guest poster today is Tracy Hahn-Burkett. Tracy was a finalist in our search for our unpubbed contributor. We loved her humor and solid advice for writers. Tracy’s impressive bio includes being a congressional staffer, a U.S. Department of Justice lawyer and a public policy advocate for civil rights, civil liberties and public education. Her blog UnchartedParent, is [...]

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There’s a lot going on. C’mere. Two of our fab contributors have new releases coming: Ann Aguirre‘s Skin Tight (written as Ava Gray) releases this Tuesday, 6/1. Visit Ann’s blog to learn about some of her promotions/contests. Allison Winn Scotch‘s third novel, The One That I Want, releases this Tuesday as well. Don’t forget that [...]

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I meet many writers who ask (essentially), “Read my writing and tell me if I should keep trying.” I have a response to that you can read here, but I also empathize if you’re looking for some sign you’re not completely hopeless. It’s tough to continue doing something when you receive no recognition or encouragement [...]

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It’s the time of year when television seasons are concluding, which always gets me thinking about storytelling — endings, specifically. The best dramatic TV season finales perform several critical functions: they pull out the narrative stops by bringing together disparate story threads in interesting and meaningful ways … they often build intrigue or cliffhangers for [...]

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Last month, I finished my new book, How To Bake A Perfect Life, and sent it off to my editor and agent, who are both speedy readers. By the time I polished up a couple of talks for a conference and returned home, they had turned it around, and I plunged into revisions. There’s a [...]

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I was late to the LOST party. I recognized sometime after the series premiered six years ago that it was a show I should’ve been watching, because I love twisty, unorthodox stories (Twin Peaks, anyone?), but I felt it was too late to catch up. At some point a few years back, I purchased the [...]

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Writerly news from around the ‘Net. This edition of Snippets focuses on the latest trends in publishing. Are you writing in the young adult genre?  Publishing Trends has a must-read article on the direction of the YA market for 2010. The big news is that series books are stronger than ever for that market, and contrary [...]

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Please welcome guest contributor Jeanne Kisacky to WU. Scholar and architectural historian, Jeanne was a finalist in our search for our unpubbed contributor, and we thought her essay was fantastic. Jeanne tells us ”I’m a recovering architect (anyone interested in joining the charter chapter of Architects Anonymous, please contact me); and an escaped editor. For [...]

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I have an (amazingly sweet) infant and an (equally sweet) toddler home with me full-time—so one of my absolute most frequently asked questions is: where on earth do you find the time to write? First of all, let me say that one of my favorite quotes on writing—the words I go back to at every [...]

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It seems that I do. The phrase “story of your heart” came from a beta reader concerning a novel that I’ve written about here before, We the Enemy. She just read it (and liked it, thank goodness), and, because she sensed that it was coming from a special place in me, made an extra effort [...]

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Sophie Masson shares her observations on French culture and oddities as she continues her writer’s sabbatical in the most romantic country on the planet. Enjoy! Today for my post I’m venturing out of Paris, heading due north to Amiens in the Somme river valley, where we spent a couple of days this month.—a city known as ‘Little [...]

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