Tips on looking at your work with clarity so you can determine your personal "done," as well as what to do when you reach that finish line.

Dust motes swirling in the gloom are enchanting, but do you really need to describe them in detail? Let’s look at some guidelines for writing descriptions so you can quench your thirst for gorgeous imagery without sacrificing the pacing of your story.

Tune in for a chat with Mary Kole's long-time friend in the children's publishing space, YA Author J.C. Geiger. He tells all about how he made an epic mixtape with music no one's heard before (and met his heroes in the process), and talks about writing young adult characters, the future of post-pandemic fiction, and—of course—the power of music.

There is a lot of controversy in the writing world about sensitivity readers, so what is a sensitivity reader? What does a sensitivity reader do? Learn more about this specializing writing and editing role here.

As writers, we know we should try to avoid clichés and stereotypes. But you might not think of unique imagery as you’re writing your first draft, so you drop in a cliché as a placeholder. When revisiting a manuscript to self-edit, though, many writers often overlook the cliché that’s right in front of them: the clichéd image.

Setting writing critique expectations is important, especially when a writer starts out getting writing feedback. A lot of writers are in a good headspace when they approach critique. Nervous, maybe. Vulnerable, of course. But eager to learn and give back to a fellow writer.

Award-winning writer and ghostwriter Kelly Madrone joins us to talk about writing as someone else, modulating a professional potty mouth, and how to create a nuanced story arc in memoir.

Now that you have a complete manuscript, you have some exciting decisions to make about what you want to do next. Whether Camp NaNoWriMo was a fun personal project or your first step on the path to publication, now is a great time to use your momentum to take your writing to new heights.

Historical and fantasy author Gail Carson Levine interviews with Mary Kole. She shares thoughts on the writing process, world-building, and her latest book, A Ceiling Made of Eggshells.

Negative feedback can be confusing and hard to hear. Turn what feels like “no” into a mission to “go”!

You can become a better writer by giving and receiving actionable advice. Here’s how.

One of the first decisions we have to make before writing is what tense to use. Present tense writing is often overlooked in favor of past tense—but when is present tense the better choice?

Developmental editing as it applies to nonfiction and memoirs specifically. Readers who buy nonfiction books are coming to that book with a specific need. You need to sell them on your thesis. You need to sell them that they have that need.

I work as a freelance editor. I work with writers at thousands of projects a year on the revision process. I provide revision services. Every writer that I work with and every writer out there, I want them to engage in their own editing, their own revision process, because I do believe that a lot of writing happens in rewriting.

Nonfiction gets a bad rap for being dry and dull, but it doesn’t have to be. Many of the same liberties can be taken in creative nonfiction as in fiction. If you have something important to share with the world from your own life, this may be your category. Some literary flair can amp up your story and make it more approachable to your readers.

Overwriting happens often in early drafts, as writers try to get the story down and figure they’ll fix things later. Sometimes details draw us in, but often they can distract readers, pushing them to think about unrelated things ... and then to stop reading.

Violet prose—an ominous and sometimes confusing term. What is it, and how do we avoid it in our writing? Or … is it really that bad?

As writers, we all have perceived strengths we fall back on time and time again. But can over-reliance on your strengths actually weaken your manuscript?

How do you blend story feedback into your manuscript? This can seem like an impossible task—maybe you’ve received feedback that requires major surgery on your story. Maybe you’ve received conflicting feedback from different sources. How do you even begin?

To level up your writing, find a critique group. If you’re struggling to get past the first chapter, or you run out of interest midway through a project, a critique group could be essential. Getting feedback is invaluable, of course, but the benefits of joining a critique group don’t stop there.