>Tips for Writers: Don’t Give Up!

> Last week I wrote that it is important to read—books and literary magazines. We not only learn from reading good work in our…

>Tips for Writers: Target your Submissions

> You’ve written a story/poem/essay and now you want to get it published. There are a lot of literary magazines out there. Most of…

>Tips for Writers: Finding Time to Write

> I used to have a great job. It was very demanding, and I often brought work home with me. I also traveled a…

>Tips for Writers: Dialogue Tags—Keep it Simple

> “Keep it simple,” he said. “What’s that you say?” she asked. It is tempting for some writers to load dialogue tags with too…

>Tips for Writers: Reading Aloud

> I’m at a residency this week at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and it provided the suggestion for today’s tip, which…

>Tips for Writers: The Cover Letter

> Some writers confuse cover letters with query letters. Indeed, there may be some overlap between the two, and their purposes are similar, but…

>Tips for Writers: Write What You DON’T Know (about what you know)

> An oft-repeated rule for writers is “write what you know.” Most of us accept this on faith because it seems to make sense….

>Tips for Writers: The Comma

> There aren’t a lot of rules in writing fiction, but here’s one that’s too often ignored: punctuation matters. It is somewhat shocking to…

>Tips for Writers: Walk This Way

> My tip today is closely related to the previous one. (See The Thesaurus Throwdown.) This week I was teaching an adult education class…

>Tips for Writers: The Thesaurus Throwdown

> This post is the first in what I hope will be a regular Friday discussion on Tips for Writers. Not that I know…