by Yilin Wang Note: This article first appeared in The Bulletin #216 in October 2021. When I tell other writers […]
Congratulations, You’ve Published Your Work and You Have Fans (and Critics): So What Do You Do Now? by Amber Benson
by Katherine Quevedo
Looking for unconventional, potentially striking ways to explore what it means to be human in your writing? It may seem counterintuitive, but personification—ascribing human qualities to inanimate objects—can open new avenues to plumb the depths of human experience.
by Martin Jenkins
One of the pleasures of genre is that it lets us identify a type of writing that we know we like. We’d feel short-changed if a crime novel didn’t feature a crime, after all, or if a romance didn’t put the travails of a relationship front and center. What we don’t want to see, however, is a mere repetition of genre tropes and clichés – it’s what is fresh and different in a work of fiction that keeps us turning the page while still being identifiably a genre work.
by Hunter Liguore
What do you fear when you sit down to write? Fear can be the debilitating emotion that prevents us from getting into the chair in the first place. It’s the force that makes lengthy excuses for why we can’t write. Next to procrastination, fear can cause us to abandon projects, call it quits, or worse, abandon the writing completely.
by Wendy Nikel
According to Forbes and other market researchers, audiobook sales are currently experiencing a major boom. With Science Fiction & Fantasy being the third-most-popular genre for this format, I decided a few months ago that I was going to try my hand at getting my books – a time travel novella series originally published in 2018-2019 by World Weaver Press – into this market. Here’s how it went.
by Setsu Uzumé
From Kickstarter to ko-fi to patreon, the search for funding can be a huge challenge. I recently attended a lecture provided by the St. Louis chapter of the Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts on the subject of applying for grants. Some of the most basic hurdles include finding grants that might be a good fit for your work, and how to prepare your materials in a way to make it easy for the folks reading your submission.
by Alex Woolf
No one enjoys being rejected. Writers, who are often a touch more sensitive than the average bear, may feel the sting even more acutely. Which is unfortunate, as the daily work of the writer involves rejection on an almost continuous basis.
by Jeff Reynolds
When I was eight, I wrote my first short story. It was bad, as the writing of an eight-year-old tends to be, full of tropes and endless misspellings. It long ago disappeared into the trash bin of my personal history. But my teacher gave me an A on the work, and I was hooked.
by Dan Brotzel
Genuine idea theft and plagiarism are complete no-nos, of course. But I’m amazed how protective writers of stories, articles and posts can be about ideas that aren’t really worth stealing. Here are a few thoughts on ideation and originality…
