What I Learned From Writing a Story I Didn’t Care About Last year I wrote a story that meant almost nothing to me. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t exploring anything I… Read more
The Difference Between a Story Idea and a Story That Actually Survives the Draft I have a folder on my computer called “Story Ideas” with over sixty entries in it. Premises. What-ifs. Characters I… Read more
Why Some of My Favorite Sentences End Up Getting Deleted There’s a sentence I wrote about six months ago that I still think about sometimes. It described the way a… Read more
I Tried Writing Every Day and Then Tried Not Writing Every Day For about three months last year, I wrote every single day. Didn’t miss once. I had a streak going and… Read more
The Smallest Writing Habit That Quietly Changed Everything for Me I should say upfront that this isn’t going to be a dramatic story. No life-changing transformation. No moment where everything… Read more
Writing When You Don’t Feel Like a Writer at All Some days I sit down to write and the thought that surfaces, before I’ve even typed a word, is: who… Read more
I Rewrote the Same Scene Five Different Ways and Here’s What Changed Each Time A few weeks ago, I got completely stuck on a scene. Two characters, a kitchen, a conversation that needed to… Read more
The Awkward Middle of a Story and Why I Always Want to Quit There There’s a specific point in every story I write where I start to believe I’ve made a terrible mistake. It… Read more
What Happens When You Let a Character Make a Bad Choice on Purpose I was about three chapters into a short story when I realized my protagonist was about to do something incredibly… Read more
The Characters I Accidentally Abandoned and What They Still Taught Me I found the file last week. Buried in a folder I hadn’t opened in maybe two years, there was a… Read more
