In the last couple of months, I released one book and wrote another in six weeks, start to finish. (No, I don’t usually write that fast; yes, I really, really wish I had the magic recipe to make novels come that quickly and easily all the time– if I ever figure that recipe out, I’ll [...]

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Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and literary agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), the first page has 16 or 17 lines. The challenge: does this narrative compel [...]

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I once had a client tell me she’d heard that sentences should never run more than fifteen words. To this day I have no idea where that rule came from, though it was probably from someone who either had a short attention span or had read way too much Henry James. The rule is nonsense, [...]

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Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved fairy tales, myths, legends, and fantasy. It’s something I responded to instinctively as a young reader, and something I took to easily as a young writer, too. In my imagination and my dreams, journeying to those magical worlds seemed to me as natural as breathing. Of course I [...]

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M.J. Rose’s new novel, SEDUCTION, is out tomorrow. It’s an Indie Next List pick, and has garnered fantastic reviews. Here are just a few: “The 1843 drowning death of Victor Hugo’s beloved eldest daughter, Didine, provides the catalyst for Rose’s well-crafted paranormal novel of suspense. Rose is especially good at recreating Hugo’s despair…making his abandonment of rationality [...]

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Somebody will tell you no. It’s going to happen. It has probably happened already. It might happen today, or tomorrow, or every day next week and then some. Maybe it happened five minutes ago and the pain is still searingly fresh, or maybe it’s on its way, looming dark and ugly on the horizon, five [...]

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Do you spring clean? Do you preserve peaches in the summer or freeze apple pies in October? Did you move a tassel from one side of your graduation cap to another? Have you danced at your daughter’s wedding? Have you walked out of the oncologist’s office with a clean bill of health, cancer free? Do [...]

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“People will do anything to alleviate their anxiety.” This is a quote from a recent episode of Mad Men, that to me, underscores the everyday context that no one talks about publicly. I work with writers, and find that anxiety is a very real and very constant part of their lives. Why? Just a few [...]

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I should subtitle that at once: when good titles don’t find you! Because that’s the heart of the matter. There are two main ways good book titles come about: 1. We have a plodding workaday title attached to our manuscript, a title we know instinctively—or are told!–will have to be changed. 2. The title comes [...]

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There have been numerous WU posts about how we begin our books, but I think the topic is worthy of repeated exploration, because beginnings are crucial. Your book’s beginning is the first impression you make on your readers, and you’ve got a very limited time in which to try to make that a good impression. [...]

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You’re no fool. Right? But is it possible, perhaps, that you do foolish things sometimes? It is. We all do. As writers, we’ve pretty much all wrong-footed it at least once or twice. But how do you know what’s foolish? Being too confident is a classic writer’s mistake, but so is being too shy and [...]

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GIVEAWAY: I am very excited to again give away a copy of my newest book, CREATE YOUR WRITER PLATFORM. It’s a book all about how to build your visibility, brand, network and discoverability so you can better market yourself and your books. I’m giving away 1 copy to a random commenter based in the U.S. [...]

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