Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2024 i Writer's Digest

Today is her forty-fifth birthday. She finds it hard to believe. Once she’d been young and she’d thought forty-five would come slow and impossible. She’d thought forty-five would be another world. But it came fast and it’s not what she thought it would be. She glances at Walter, at the fading glory of him, and she wonders how different things would be if she hadn’t met him. —None of This Is True, Lisa Jewell (thriller) Two words ended the fight, one on each side. Brett called Sunna jealous, and Sunna called Brett fake, and though both women had used many worse words than those throughout the course of the fight, those were the ones that rang in the air like gunshots. As the saying goes, the truth hurts. —Sorry I…

COMBINING POEMS AND EMOTION Writing poetry is very helpful for processing emotions. Fall head over heels in love? Write a poem. Tumble down the stairs of a broken heart? Write a poem. Get in a heated argument? Write a poem. Dealing with the aftermath of a tragic event? Write a poem. Personally, because I’m a human being, I’ve faced all these situations (and more) at one point or another, and yes, I’ve written poems while processing each. Writing poems—drafts that will never see the light of day—has benefitted my mental health a great deal over the years. On the page of a journal or in a Google doc, I can rant, rave, praise, and confront all the emotions swirling within myself as they overtake me. There is nothing wrong with…

When Winter Comes; The Self-Publishing Blueprint (Nonfiction books for authors, horror, and suspense fiction; Activated Authors [nonfiction]; Devil’s Rock Publishing [fiction]) WHY SELF-PUBLISH? In the beginning, I was just interested in learning how books were made. I didn’t just want to write stories, I wanted to understand the full process of creating a book (from paper types, to page sizes, to formatting, and covers). When I finally released my first book, I found that I loved the sense of control that came with self-publishing. … I can build a career that centers itself on pleasing my readers and not having to worry about jumping over hurdles for gate-keeping publishers. HAD YOU CONSIDERED TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING? Traditional publishing never crossed my mind in the beginning. I wanted to write the stories I wanted to…

Jennifer March Soloway (she/her/hers) is a senior agent with the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Previously, she worked in marketing and public relations in a variety of industries, including financial services, healthcare, and toys. She has an MFA in creative writing and English from Mills College in Oakland and lives in San Francisco with her husband, their two sons, and a bulldog. “I love to champion others,” March Soloway says. “As an agent, I get to help people pursue their dreams. It’s thrilling to call a client to let them know their project is going to get published, especially if we’ve been trying a while without luck. One client and I had been on submission for two years. We came close several times, but something always seemed to fall apart. Yet…

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If you’ve ever been in a writing workshop, you’ve probably heard the conversation wander into some version of “But how does the character feel?” Whenever I’ve been asked a version of this question—or told, more bluntly, that the reader can’t tell what my character is feeling—I’m stricken with panic. I’ve failed my reader! Once upon a time, I’d run back to my manuscript and sprinkle in sentences like: Tom looked away from his son (whom he loved so dearly), as his eyes filled with heavy tears, regret and terrible sorrow growing within him. Yikes. Next time my pages come up, everyone’s slashing out this sentence describing poor Tom’s emotional state. But I’m just doing what you asked me to do! So often in writing, if we’re picking the right…

I once heard John Irving describe how he came up with his novels this way: “I think of a character I love and then imagine the worst thing that could happen to them.” This is a pretty good description of any story, which is always going to be driven by conflict and trouble and problems. It’s one thing, however, to depict a fictional character suffering abuse or deprivation; it’s another thing when that character is you. Memoir often requires us to write about our most challenging memories, moments we would never choose to experience again, but without which we would not be who we are today. Here are a couple of approaches for handling the most emotionally difficult conflicts in memoir. OTHER PEOPLE Schoolyard bullies, alcoholic parents, and spiteful lovers…

I am conflict-averse, and I hate confrontation. Generally, I try to avoid both at all costs. That’s probably not the best way to live life, and it’s certainly not the best way to write a book. Or is it? At first glance, it would seem that a book without conflict wouldn’t really have much going on, at least not in the way of keeping a reader’s attention. But the more I think about it, it’s the characters who go out of their way to avoid conflict that find themselves in the thick of a conflict that needn’t have happened to begin with. Of course, it’s not really the conflict they’re trying to avoid; it’s the negative emotions that go along with it. Take romance novels: Two people start to have…

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One of the things articles in this issue challenge writers to do is to express a character’s emotions without specifically naming the emotion (i.e., not writing: “He was angry”). Write a few sentences about each image that will show readers what emotion your character or the people in the images could be feeling by describing things like physiological responses, body language, gestures, etc.…

I got my start as a full-time writer when I was 19 years old—so long ago that I penned my first articles with a goose quill on parchment—and over the ensuing decades, I learned a thing or two about both the good and the bad of freelance writing. When talking with writers who are new to the game, I try to accentuate the positive aspects of the job, such as the freedom to write on topics of personal interest and the satisfaction of helping others through our work. But there are very real aspects of freelancing that can be frustrating and demoralizing, and sometimes make us question why we stick with it. I don’t like to focus on the negative, but I feel it’s important to make new freelancers aware…

Ishi Robinson Sweetness in the Skin (Literary fiction, April, HarperCollins) “Sweetness in the Skin is about a Jamaican girl named Pumkin, struggling with her identity and trying to find her place in the world, who is determined to bake her way into the opportunity of a lifetime.” WRITES FROM: Berlin. PRE-SWEETNESS: I started off writing short stories as a child, a couple of which got published, then as a teenager, I wrote a weekly opinion column on teenage life in Kingston, Jamaica, for the national newspaper. In Rome, I wrote a weekly opinion column on life as an expat for a now-defunct e-zine. I got back into fiction writing in Berlin: I wrote short stories, a number of which were published in online magazines and one in an anthology. TIME…

When thinking about which markets match up with exploring emotion and conflict, it eventually dawned on me that political magazines are the best fit—a category that I’ve been avoiding for years now, probably because politics are rife with conflict and strong emotions. Yet, maybe that’s why politics is such a strong category as well. Like Writer’s Digest itself, some of these magazines have been around for more than 100 years. As WD has covered the craft and business of writing, these magazines have covered politics. While two of these magazines do publish poetry, they’re mostly all looking for nonfiction pitches. Regardless of your political leanings, I hope these magazines will give you a good place to start. DISSENT (DissentMagazine.org) Dissent is a magazine published three times per year (winter, spring,…

The world of children’s publishing is tough. Publishing houses are consolidating, print sales are struggling, and profit margins are narrow. Because of this economic reality, many publishers lean heavily into “sure things”—like celebrity books, sequels or series, and popular IP projects. Even for those publishers that are deeply committed to increasing diversity and elevating unheard voices in children’s literature, the bottom line still dictates that they produce books that appeal to the widest audience possible. Luckily, the explosion of self-publishing has opened the door for unknown authors to create books that fill those gaps in the market that traditional publishers can’t or won’t fill. And perhaps not surprisingly, many of those authors are the very people who discovered those gaps in the first place—parents. THE PARENTS OF PUBLISHING Parents are…

EVE J. CHUNG is a Taiwanese American human rights lawyer focusing on gender equality and women’s rights. She lives in New York with her husband, two children, and two dogs. ROB HART (RobWHart.com) is the author of Assassins Anonymous, as well as The Paradox Hotel, which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, and The Warehouse, which was published in more than 20 countries. He also wrote the Ash McKenna series, the short story collection Take-Out, the novella Scott Free with James Patterson, and the comic book Blood Oath with Alex Segura. He is currently a writing mentor in Seton Hill University’s MFA program. CHELSEA TORNETTO (ChelseaTornetto.com) is a former teacher turned author. Her first book, Conquering Content Vocabulary, was published by Scholastic in 2018, but now her passion is picture books.…

I have been engaged in a yearslong war with Grammarly over the phrase “in order to.”1 I occasionally use the grammarchecking site in my freelance writing work as a kind of “super spellcheck,” and every time it highlights the phrase and suggests, pretty sternly, that I reduce it down to “to.” And just about every time, I refuse. Is “in order to” a clunky phrase? Sure. But I’m a rhythm-focused writer,2 and sometimes the extra syllables work best. Does this constant struggle against a robot copyeditor occasionally spiral me into an existential depression where I question not just my ability to write well but also my fashion sense, interior design taste, and overall rizz?3 Yes. And it’s not just Grammarly—there is an endless list of writing tools out there,…

When I wrote Daughters of Shandong, my biggest challenge was finding a way to convey, in full force, the gravity of what my characters overcame. In that sense, I was terrified of failing to do them justice. Writing is not something I’m accustomed to thinking about—it’s impulsive, a gravitational pull like rolling down the hill. Words spill out. They aren’t necessarily good, in fact early on they’re awful, but that first layer of frenzied sentences is akin to an ugly slab of clay. Once it’s down, I can mold it. I have little formal training in creative writing, but I have spent years of my life trying to use words to generate action. As a human rights lawyer, I write every day. However, I usually must do so in a…

In Alyssa Cole’s newest thriller, One of Us Knows, the lead character Kenetria Nash is the host of what’s known as a “system,” a group of personalities that inhabit the same body. But this is no fantasy novel. This unique situation occurs when an individual has dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder. From The Perfect Daughter by D. J. Palmer to the TV show “The Crowded Room,” popular media continues to use DID for its tantalizing plot twists and the unique opportunity it presents to explore the expansive possibilities of identity. One of Alyssa Cole’s primary goals was not to add to the harmful narratives surrounding DID, a mental illness that impacts an estimated 1 percent of the population according to the National Institutes of Health.…

Congratulations! You’ve received an offer of representation from your Dream Agent. It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. In the good ole’ days of threehour lunches and cocktails sharply at 5 p.m., many authors signed with their agents on a handshake. Most agencies do have actual Agency Agreements now, and no two agreements are the same. However, some standard clauses appear in most Agency Agreements. But before you sign, I urge you to be sure that you have a clear understanding of the terms of the document. Some agreements are concise and straightforward; others are many pages of legalese. No matter which yours is, read it carefully, as it can affect your career for years. I recommend relying on multiple resources and asking lots of questions, of your fellow authors…

Though she was usually law-abiding and cautious, Susan was so late that she allowed herself to do something she’d usually never do: She put the pedal to the metal and accelerated all the way to 80 miles an hour, though the speed limit was 65. She did so because she was mad at Charles. Madder than a hornet’s nest! Even so, she wanted to look good for the upcoming confrontation at their lawyer’s office. So, cautiously, she reached over to her purse in the passenger seat and began rooting around in it for her lipstick. The purse was COACH brand, burgundy leather, with cocoa-brown accents, and a gold zipper, and of course the COACH logo, also in gold. The lipstick was REVLON’s iconic “Cherries in the Snow,” which Susan had…

Typically in this column, the frontlist title is talked about first, followed by the older title. This time, the order will be reversed because the newer novel is the sequel to the older, but I’ll be careful to avoid any spoilers. Backlist Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice (ECW Press, Literary/dystopian fiction, October 2018) SYNOPSIS: As Evan Whitesky and other members of a small Anishinaabe community in northern Canada prepare for another long, snowy winter, their cell phones stop receiving a signal. The power from the new hydroelectric dam they were assured would help them is cut off, and CBC radio signals are silent. Already geographically remote, the townspeople wait for word of what’s happened and when power will be restored. Over the following week, when the food…