Writer Unboxed

Kath here. Please welcome Boston-based poet and novelist L.J. Cohen to Writer Unboxed. L.J. was a finalist in our quest to find an unpublished contributor. She’s been a part of the WU community for years, having contributed a two-part guest post for us in 2008 on using a wiki to organize a novel (see part one and [...]

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WRITERS AND EDITORS “Good, but needs work.” That’s the only note my first writing teacher ever gave to anyone, and man it pissed me off. Wasn’t he paying attention? Then I realized that, for a young writer trying to improve, “Good, but needs work” was pretty much all the edit I needed because my work [...]

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Editor and friend of WU Dave King (co-author of the must-have book for writers, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print) emailed recently to say: I’ve just become aware of a couple of new sins in the publishing world that writers need to know about. I know a lot of [...]

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As some of you know, I recently left my career in publishing for a career in academia, teaching e-media majors at the University of Cincinnati. Of the many lessons I learned working at a corporate publishing house, here are the three I’m thankful for that you should know too. 1. Wordsmithing takes you only so [...]

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We are taking the day off for the big Gobble Gobble. Wishing you and your family a peaceful holiday. We’ll see you tomorrow!

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As we are all about to celebrate Thanksgiving, it seemed a good time to think about food and plenty and the abundance that surrounds us in our writing lives. For the space of this weekend, I suggest we focus on plenty, rather than lack. The image of the cornucopia has been catching my eye quite [...]

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Today’s guest post is by contemporary romance author Alison Kent. Alison is writing in a new subgenre of the romance market: the reality-based romance. Her new book, THE ICING ON THE CAKE, is a fictionalized retelling of a real-life romance. As writers, we are all looking for ways to stay in the game, and Alison [...]

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Kath here. Please welcome Joseph Bates, author of The Nighttime Novelist: Finish Your Novel in Your Spare Time to WU. Bates’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The South Carolina Review, Identity Theory, Lunch Hour Stories, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, and Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market. He holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature and [...]

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Kath here. In the spirit of holiday giving, Therese and I decided to turn over the month of December to WU readers. That’s right, you get to set the agenda at WU for a whole month. We’re going to let you ask YOUR burning question about the craft of writing fiction, queries, agent hunting, the [...]

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I’ve been traveling a great deal recently (I’m at a convention in Texas right now) so am posting a caption challenge instead of my regular cartoon this weekend. Feel free to post your suggestions for a caption for the cartoon below! The winner will get a selection of my custom-made greeting cards.

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I had kind of an interesting question come up during the editing process on my second book, Dark Moon of Avalon. I’ve been saving this post until Dark Moon was out in the world–but now it is, as of September. So without being too spoilerishly-spoily, there is a wedding scene in the book. And the [...]

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One of the things a writer needs most is mental distance from her writing, and it seems it’s also one of the most difficult to achieve. Recently a writer sent the opening of a story to my blog, Flogging the Quill, for a critique. In addition to my take on writers’ submissions, readers of the [...]

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