Any writer who has had a book on submission knows the stomach-twisting anxiety. Why hasn’t anyone called? Where is my six-figure deal and my auction? Ha! More likely, you will be greeted with crickets. Weeks, maybe months, of crickets. I’m…
An inauspicious anniversary recently passed; it’s been a full year since I signed a contract with a literary agent to represent my novel. The day marked twelve months of suspense, frustration, and heartbreak at rejection emails worded with such tact…
I’m writing a book that will probably never get published. Not because it’s a bad book, necessarily, though it may be, but because it’s a book about people trying to escape the kind of broken country we might end up…
I am an expert at cleaning out my closet. I have been pushed by circumstance to get rid of many of my possessions again and again. But when it comes to my words—I’m not as talented. I have been thinking…
Fiction readers expect more of characters than they do of people in real life. In life you can have a person who does inexplicable self-destructive or transgressive shit, and friends and colleagues just shake their heads and say, “Oh, that’s…
Abuse kind of fucks up your head. Anybody who’s been there will tell you that. And while we survivors can respond to the injustices done upon us in a myriad of ways, I’ve noticed a significant ratio of us seem…