NAIWE

Alright, if you’ve been following my “How to Write a Novel” series, I hope you have found these posts helpful in creating fleshed out characters. Audiences are drawn to characters with identifiable weaknesses […]

I began writing short fiction in September 2018 and as of August 2019 had published, or had accepted for publication, a total of twenty-seven stories. Though most of my fiction has appeared in deliberately […]

There came a time, early in my career, when I was faced with a difficult situation: I needed to earn more money. But since I generated my income from publishers and others who chose for their own reasons and on […]

The better a professional writer you become, the bigger and more important will be the contracts people ask you to sign.

But tempting as those financial figures may be (with all those zeroes to the left of the […]

One of the keys to professional writing is to crank out a lot of good work. And to do that, you’ll need to put in a good deal of time.

The best way to guarantee that you’ll have the time available to acc […]

National Wellness Month. This month focuses on self-care, managing stress, and promoting healthy routines.

August 1-7: Simplify Your Life Week. This week encourages you to refocus your life and declutter. […]

We wanted to get to know Mark Allen (NAIWE’s AP Stylebook Expert) better, so last month we sat down with him. Here are some things he shared.

What is one thing that you learned about style manuals the hard w […]

K.M. Weiland is an excellent resource for writers of all types. Her website Helping Writers Become Authors should be on everyone’s short list of helpful websites. Also, her books on writing are excellent and […]

There is a lot of excitement brewing about the upcoming live-action remake of Disney’s Mulan, and I have to say, I am one of those folks. I am stoked. Mulan was the first movie I saw in theaters when I was […]

Ruth E. Thaler-Carter
The 4th of July celebrations this past week, along with a prompt from NAIWE executive director April Michelle Davis, got me thinking about the connection between freelancing and […]

When asked what author inspired them the most to write, many writers will name JK Rowling. Indeed, her books are quite phenomenal. I adored them growing up, and I would be lying if I said she wasn’t on my own […]

For all the glib chatter one encounters about the “rules” of English grammar and usage, many people misunderstand what the rules are and how they work, and others prate about rules that aren’t rules at all. […]

Several months ago, I wrote two posts based on a concept from the book “Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don’t Seem to Matter. . . But Really Do,” by Melinda Blau and Karen L. Fingerman.  (See “Con […]

If you want to be a professional writer, then you ought to treat your work as a business. And that means you ought to develop a business plan.

If you’re just starting out to become a professional writer, you […]

The main argument for coal mines seems to be that they offer jobs to people who would otherwise have no job. If this is really the case, why not train those people for other jobs working on projects to develop […]

Every story begins with an idea, and nearly every idea begins with “What if?”

What if the toys in a child’s bedroom came to life when humans weren’t around?

What if dinosaurs and humans were trapped on […]

Tick, tick, tick.

Sometimes you can almost hear the clock ticking down until your deadline. As much as we try to work ahead, journalists are often in a pinch.

And it really stinks when a source bails at […]