In October 2019, I took the plunge. I made my first short-story submission to a paying market. The rejection came twelve days later. It was a higher tier rejection—the best kind, short of one bearing a personal note from the editor. I felt energized. I was—to steal Mur Lafferty’s phrasing—a working writer.
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The holidays are here again. Cue the gift-giving anxiety! I can’t tell you what you should buy for everyone on your list — mea culpa — but I can offer up these 15 holiday gifts for your writer friends. Whether you know an aspiring novelist or someone just nominated for a major award, this guide has a little something for writers of every stripe.
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When you’ve been writing for long enough, or once you’ve read enough how-to books for writers, you start to notice just how similar all the “different” advice you’re getting sounds. In Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative, veteran writer Chuck Wendig has crafted an irreverent guide to the one thing every writer should be striving for: how to tell good stories.
“Lesbian necromancers in space.” It’s one hell of a tagline, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. The space-faring fantasy debut from Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth is a tale of intrigue, murder, greasepaint, and … well … Gideon.
So you want to write a novel — now what? Well, unless you plan to pull 100,000-plus words from where the sun don’t shine, you’re going to want to do a bit of plotting before you begin. It’s ultimately up to you to decide how to plot your novel, but I’ve picked out five methods you can use to find success as a writer — whatever that means to you.
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