Category Writer’s Tips

Readers are finding books in new ways. Learn how authors can improve discoverability, strengthen their online presence, and reach more readers in the age of AI.

I once heard Spike Lee talk to a room full of screenwriters about how to begin building a story. He didn’t start with structure or theme. He started with something much simpler. “Go to Staples,” he said, “or any office…

“As a reviewer, you bring together the two strands of accurate, analytical reading and strong, personal response when you indicate what the book is about and what it might mean to a reader (by explaining what it meant to you).…

Peter Elbow is a professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst… where he also directed the Writing Program from 1996 until 2000. He writes about theory, practice, and pedagogy, and has authored several books and papers. He…

All writers strive for those magical moments when the words seems to flow effortlessly from mind to page, when one loses track of time and enters a trance-like state of creative focus. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term “flow state”…

The term writer’s block was first coined in New York City in 1947 by Edmund Bergler, a well-known disciple of Sigmund Freud. Bergler, an Austrian psychiatrist called writer’s block a form of “psychic masochism, the unconscious wish to defeat one’s…

Fear of robots has been sweeping the ranks… Today, I opened the Edge browser, which I rarely use. That’s the browser which is linked by default to open the screen prompts that appear when the Windows operating system on my…

November is National Novel Writing Month. The “official” challenge is to write the first draft of a new, 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Rules, rules, rules… you can follow the official ones if you want to but I just want…

Each week at 10:30 am (EST) on Friday, we host a free 2-hour writer’s workshop. There is no charge to attend and I encourage you to join with a cadre of fellow writers to read and discuss all sorts of…