How to Set SMART Writing Goals for 2024

smart writing goals

Happy 2024! We hope this year will be full of writing for you—and if you’re like us, you’ve even got writing goals among your New Year’s Resolutions. One thing to consider is that not all goals are created equal. Goals can be fuzzy (“I want to write more”), over-ambitious, or have lots of other issues.…

Read More

Takeaways from AWP 2023

AWP 2023 open your mind book

Our staff just got back from AWP 2023, a huge annual literary conference that was held in Seattle this year. To start with, here are the equivalent of 9,000 words in pictures from AWP itself, especially the book fair and offsite events which we were most involved in: Three of us were able to go:…

Read More

Remembering Instructor Shelley Singer

Longtime Writers.com instructor Shelley Singer passed away on Thursday, November 10, 2022. Below, Writers.com founder Mark Dahlby reflects on a work relationship that spans the age of the internet itself. When Writers.com sent out an email in 1995, listing its first classes to be offered, Shelley Singer was one of the teachers. She continued teaching…

Read More

5 Tips on Self-Publishing Your Book

self-publishing tips

For book writers, the publishing process is often a fearful mystery. Self-publishing a book can intensify this mystery, because it can seem like you’re all on your own, with no clear place to start. Although I’ve managed Writers.com since 2019, it wasn’t until this past year that I learned the self-publishing process myself, while helping…

Read More

Migration

cedar waxwings | migration by miho kinnas

Because you felt better after the blood test we drove to downtown turning down Liberty, we waited for the pedestrians to cross above us, birds fluttered between a palmetto and a palmetto I said, “cedar waxwings.” “They are busy.” “That’s how I know who they are.” They act as if being chased by a big…

Read More

Story Writing Exercise: What Does Your Character Want?

writing exercise character desire

Desire—what a character wants or needs—forms the backbone of any fictional plot and the basis of conflict. Often, when writers have problems generating a story, it’s because they’re not thinking in terms of a central, concrete desire, that which motivates the main character and moves them to action. They haven’t articulated for themselves what their main…

Read More

Creative Writing Anxiety: What It Is and How to Overcome It

overcoming writing anxiety

Editor’s Note: In this interview on writing anxiety, instructor Giulietta Nardone describes what creative writing anxiety is, what causes it, and—most importantly—how to get over writing anxiety. What is writing anxiety? There are many people who would like to start writing, or to take a writing class, but they never get started because the critical…

Read More