Melissa and I just attended a terrific conference called STORY in Nashville.

We presented a breakout session called "The 5 Elements of Putting Your Story to Words."

Many of the attendees...

On Monday, I hit a milestone. I wasn’t expecting to.

There I was: sweat dripping from my face, mid-movement of a tricep extension.

And I heard my coach congratulate me,...

A friend sent me a great quote from Twitter the other day:

"I don't know who needs to hear this, but a first draft does not need to be good - it needs to be written."

The quote comes from Emily...

Do you want to write your family story? But don’t know where to start?

A family story is one of the best ways to preserve your history for future generations. It bonds your family together....

If I wasn’t speeding down the expressway already late for my appointment, I would have jotted down this scene from a podcast I was listening to. 
 
It would make for a great detail in...

Most authors want to publish their book. And to share their story with the world they have to publicize it. But publicity is murky. Sometimes difficult to navigate. You might find yourself asking,...

The single biggest challenge in almost any form of writing is attention:

How do you sustain the attention of your reader?

There's an old line:

"When there's no more tension in a story, the story is...

“Melissa, I need you to rewrite this article. The hook is a cliché.”
 
My editor at Flea Market Style magazine served me one of the most valuable writing...

Ernest Hemingway was a wretched soul.

But he remains one of America's greatest fiction writers.

I recently read a profile of Hemingway, which was published in the New Yorker in 1950.

The profile is...

“Do I need to build a platform?”

The short answer: yes. Publishers and agents want you to have a platform so that you can sell your book. But what exactly is a platform?

Platform is a...

If I’m scrubbing a toilet at 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon, I’m likely procrastinating. 
 
I’m an expert procrastinator, especially when it comes to writing. 
 
I...

 “What do you look for in a manuscript?”

It’s a question every literary agent hears hundreds of times throughout their careers. And it’s the golden question writers...