Writer Unboxed

 I have spent my life dreaming of a clutter-free desk. Alas, I am a writer, and behind every piece of ‘finished’ writing I produce, there are hundreds of scattered post-its and index cards, scads of pictures, research binders, books, and file folders, all of which find their disorganized home on my desk or nearby surfaces. [...]

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Therese here. Today’s guest is debut novelist Jennifer Miller, who’s here to talk with us today about agents–particularly why it’s important to have not only any agent, but the right agent. Jennifer’s book, The Year of the Gadfly, will be published by Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt in May 2012. And even though the book isn’t available to pre-order yet, [...]

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Kath here. Today, prolific novelist Lisa Tucker agreed to guest post with WU on how the e-publishing revolution is reviving a literary tradition once thought dead: the short story/novella. Lisa is the author of six novels: The Song Reader, Shout Down the Moon, Once Upon a Day, The Cure for Modern Life, The Promised World, [...]

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Yesterday guest Nina Badzin walked us through the science of Twitter–basics and tricks that can help you make the most of Twitter from a technical standpoint. (Missed the post? Click HERE.) Today she’s back with us to discuss some of the finer points of being a Twitter-user. How to use it wisely, and have fun [...]

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Therese here. Today’s guest is Nina Badzin, who’s here today–and tomorrow–to talk with us about Twitter. (Basics today, technique savvy tomorrow.) Nina is not only an aspiring novelist and inspired Twitter Queen (@NinaBadzin), she was one of our quarter-finalists in our search for an unpublished writer to contribute to WU back in 2010. Since that [...]

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One of the most common questions I receive is: How can I use XYZ social media tool to market and promote my book? Sometimes I feel like I’m being asked: How can I find Mr. or Mrs. Right who will make me happy for the rest of my life? So many factors are at play, [...]

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Against all foreseeable odds, I have a hit on my hands. A bona fide, number one, widely reviewed and widely praised (well, widely within a rarefied world) hit. It happens to be a book about poker, and it happens to be a hit within that rarefied world largely on the strength of the public profile [...]

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I have finally turned in a final draft of my next novel, The Garden of Happy Endings. It has been a bear. Not kidding. I know that I whine about all of them, but this one really was hard. It was a subject I have not tackled before, and the narrative required a lot from me, and [...]

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Therese here. I’m so pleased to bring you today’s guest, author and teacher James Scott Bell, who is here to talk with us about powerful dialogue. James is not only a bestselling thriller novelist, he’s written three truly helpful craft books for Writers Digest, including the bestselling Plot & Structure, Revision & Self-Editing, and The Art [...]

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Therese elbowing in for a sec to officially welcome Chuck Sambuchino to Writer Unboxed; this is his first post with us as a monthly contributor. One of the most common recurring work blog items I get complimented on (besides my headshot, which my wife has called “semi-dashing … almost”) is my “New Agent Alerts,” a [...]

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So how is this for an opener: Here is my blog post called Writing in the Cold about my video called Writing in the Cold, which is about an essay by Ted Solotaroff called “Writing in the Cold”, which was published in Granta in 1985. The essay was something one of my MFA mentors (Leonard [...]

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Therese here. Today’s guest is Joe Bunting, who’s here today to blog about two different sorts of writers: the Genius and the Late Bloomer. Joe, a self-professed Late Bloomer, founded the blog The Write Practice, a site that showcases craft techniques and then encourages writers to practice them for fifteen minutes a day, six days [...]

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