Don’t miss MJ Rose’s new class, Start Your Novel Today!, now available at WritersWeekly.com. Don’t miss this fun, interactive class! Let MJ Rose show you how to start your novel today! See: This article may be freely reprinted/redistributed as long as the entire article and bio are included. Once upon a time authors did not […]
Sometimes a story just knocks on the door and invites itself in. That’s the way it was with my time-travel novel, Souleiado. It wasn’t the first novel I’d ever written: that distinction went to Houdini, a young-adult novel about a stray cat who makes good and whom late writer and activist Cleveland Amory was kind enough to call ” a sweet, loyal soul. And a brave one, to boot” when he read it. No, Souleiado was the novel that demanded to be written — the one that was born out of the grief and loneliness that followed my husband Tim’s death in a car accident.
DAY TWO – Your Master List What should writers do? With so many ideas floating around in their minds, it’s impossible to keep them all organized, right? Maybe not. Today we’ll take a major organizing leap, and create a cheat sheet of the types of information you use. The Master List, your organizing bible, drives […]
“You should write children’s books,” suggested my mother.
A recognizable trademark is one of a company’s most valuable assets. We may not always know the name of the company behind a product, but we’re familiar with Alpo dog food, Campbell’s soup, Chiquita bananas, Smucker’s jam, and thousands of others. Several generations of children have grown up singing the Oscar Mayer weiner jingle. Writers […]
My first novel recently hit the bookstore shelves. Marie, The Lobster Queen is really not my book, but a book ghostwritten by me for a client who wanted to write her memoirs. She did, however, give me a Ghostwritten by on the inside pages.
As we all deck the halls, light the Menorah or Kinara, or simply stare in awe at snowflakes prancing through the air, it’s the perfect time to start keeping a list of memorable holiday moments that will make great articles in print next year. Pull out a small notebook and keep a journal of each holiday happening. Just a few moments of reflection and note-taking at bedtime will provide you with plenty of material! Then, in January, review what you’ve written and start composing queries.
Like many writers I was outraged back when Moxie editor Emily Hancock began demanding a $10 reading fee with all submissions. I fired off rants to editors, made a crude voodoo doll in what I imagined to be in Emily Hancock’s likeness, and stuck pins between its eyes, in the back of its head, and, […]
In the eighties and nineties I published dozens of Christmas short stories in newspapers and in “little and literary” magazines. I didn’t make much money, but I picked up many legitimate publishing credits. In 2000 I collected twelve of the stories into a self-published book, A Christmas Dozen: Christmas Stories to Warm the Heart. A backyard hit, it sold out its first printing of 1,000 in 40 days and 40 nights, then sold half the second printing of 3,000 in the next 20 days. By the end of a full year I had sold 8,000 and professionally recorded the audio book myself.
This article may be freely reprinted/redistributed as long as the entire article and bio are included. I don’t remember ever wanting to be anything other than a writer. As a kid I devoured books and authors were my heroes. But no matter how many notebooks or pens I bought, no matter how many classes I […]
