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Writers Write, Right?

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Photo by Flickr user kellywritershouse

Writers write.

It’s such a staple of writing advice that it’s almost impossible to pinpoint where the quote comes from. When you start looking into writing quotes and statements, every successful author seems to have written some variation on the theme. Writers write. They don’t talk about writing, or think about writing, or wish they’d written — they write.

It’s simple, straightforward, and unarguable.

Someone who thinks about writing, or talks about writing, or wishes they were writing isn’t, well, writing. So they’re not a writer.

But…

The trouble with general advice is that there’s no nuance; no context. What does “writers write” actually mean, in the bigger picture of life?

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Bad Writing Habits and How to Break Them

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This is somewhat embarrassing to admit in public, but we’re all friends here at WU, so I’ll go ahead: not long ago, one of my books was being made into an audiobook, and during the recording process the producer pointed out how many times my characters nodded in agreement to something. I don’t have an exact count, but it was a kind of horrifying amount of nodding I had going on. Like, to the point where you would have thought I was confused as to whether I was writing about a bunch of … [Read more...]

We Will Always Be Beginners

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Please join us in welcoming new contributor Natalia Sylvester to Writer Unboxed! Born in Lima, Peru, Natalia Sylvester came to the U.S. at age four. A former magazine editor, Natalia now works as a freelance writer in Austin, Texas and is a faculty member of the low-res MFA program at Regis University. Her articles have appeared in Latina Magazine, Writer’s Digest, The Writer, and NBCLatino.com. Her debut novel, CHASING THE SUN, was named Best Debut Book of 2014 by Latinidad and was chosen as a … [Read more...]

Are Libraries the New Bookstores?

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Please welcome return guest Martha Conway! Martha's first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award, and her novel Thieving Forest won the North American Book Award for Historical Fiction. Her short fiction has been published in the Iowa Review, Carolina Quarterly, Folio, and other journals, and she teaches creative writing for Stanford University's Online Writers Studio and UC Berkeley Extension. Martha grew up in northern Ohio and now lives in San Francisco. Her latest novel is Sugarland. I love … [Read more...]

Daydream Your Way To A Better Story

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Please welcome Marin Thomas to Writer Unboxed. Marin writes Women’s Fiction for Berkley/NAL and western romances for Harlequin books. To date she has contracted over 35 projects for Harlequin. Her first women's fiction novel, The Promise of Forgiveness, will release next month. Marin grew up in Janesville, Wisconsin, and attended college at the University of Arizona where she played basketball for the Lady Wildcats and earned a B.A. in Radio-TV. Following graduation she married her college … [Read more...]

Writing as Compulsion

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Please welcome Densie Webb as our guest today ("Not Denise: I think my mom had a moment of dyslexia…”). Densie has been a nonfiction writer/editor, mainly about health and nutrition, for her entire career. She has written for The New York Times, Parade, been a columnist for Prevention, Family Circle and now writes for industry and trade organizations. She added fiction to the mix about six years ago and never looked back. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, SheWrites, the … [Read more...]

Four Post-Its to Post Over Our Desks

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Editor Victoria Mixon is back with us today to share an excerpt from her book for writers, Art & Craft of Writing: Secret Advice for Writers. Written for her blog over the years as Victoria's editing business blossomed, this advice is now collected into one place—for free. Four Post-Its to Post Over Our Desks “What if. . .” Let’s write down the “what if?” premise of a story. Then every time we look up, pondering where to go in a difficult scene, we will be re-oriented on our chosen … [Read more...]

Standing Out on the Crowded Shelf—How to Help Your Fiction Find an Audience

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Our guest today is Lynne Griffin, author of the family-focused novels Girl Sent Away, Sea Escape, and Life Without Summer, as well as the nonfiction parenting guides Let’s Talk About It: Adolescent Mental Health and Negotiation Generation—Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment. Lynne is a counselor who teaches family studies at Wheelock College, and she is the Social-Emotional Learning Specialist and Coordinator of Parent and Professional Programs for an independent school in … [Read more...]

Writing Rules

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Ever since I read W. Somerset Maugham’s quote about his three rules for writing a novel, I’ve been thinking about it. Here’s what Maugham said: There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” It’s kind of joke, I know. But it’s also serious. Maugham wrote twenty novels and a lot of other stuff, too, and he knew what he was doing. I can’t be sure, but I think he was saying that the art or craft of writing is a mystery to even those who are successful—the … [Read more...]

False Summits–and How to Get to the Top Anyway

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Today’s guest is Harry Bingham, the (British) author of the Fiona Griffiths crime series, which has been critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic. He also runs a couple of outfits, The Writers' Workshop & Agent Hunter, that offer a variety of help and advice to new writers. Harry lives in Oxfordshire, England. He's married and he and his wife are, this summer, expecting their second set of twins. They're not terrified at all. I've had over a dozen books published by some of the … [Read more...]

5 Things I’ve Learned from Writing a YA Novel

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Please welcome today’s guest Sandra Gulland—an internationally bestselling author of biographical historical fiction set in France. She is known for the depth and accuracy of her research, as well as for creating novels that bring history vividly to life. Published by Simon & Schuster and Doubleday in the US, and HarperCollins in Canada, she is now writing two Young Adult novels for Penguin in the US and Canada. The popular Josephine B. Trilogy about Napoleon's wife Josephine has been … [Read more...]

The Story Iceberg

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Our guest today is Gwendolyn Womack. Originally from Houston, Texas, Gwendolyn began writing plays in college while freezing in the tundra at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She received an MFA from CalArts in Directing for theater and film and currently resides in California where she can be found at her keyboard. The Memory Painter is her first novel (you can watch a trailer here). One lucky commenter to this post will win a copy of The Memory Painter—leave a comment to be entered in the … [Read more...]

That Awkward Moment When…

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Today’s guest is Erika Mitchell, author of Blood Money and Bai Tide, the first novel of a new series about CIA case officer Bai Hsu (Champagne Books, 2015). Erika cut her espionage teeth on James Bond marathons with her father at a formative age and has never looked back. She lives in the Seattle, WA area with her husband and their two tiny spies-in-training and welcomes new online friends at her blog, on Twitter, or on Facebook. Of today's post, Erika says: One of the things that meant the … [Read more...]

Doing the Work

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Today’s guest is Robin Antalek author of The Grown Ups (William Morrow, 2015) and The Summer We Fell Apart (Harper Collins, 2010) which was chosen as a Target Breakout Book. Robin's non-fiction work has been published at The Weeklings, The Nervous Breakdown, and collected in the following anthologies: The Beautiful Anthology; Writing off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema; and The Weeklings: Revolution #1 Selected Essays 2012-1013. Her short fiction has appeared in Salon, 52 Stories, … [Read more...]