Story-a-Week: What I’ve Learned So Far (Pt. 3) For writers, there’s nothing more frustrating than dumping buckets of energy and love into a story, typing

Story-a-Week: What I’ve Learned So Far (Pt. 2) In my last post, I talked about how my friend and I decided to take on the

Story-a-Week: What I’ve Learned So Far (Pt. 1) I’m three months into my efforts to write a short story a week, and I’ve begun to

52 Weeks, 52 Stories Landing Your First Publication, Mandy Wallace With my MFA behind me, I’m setting my sights on earning a more recent publishing

A cover for my book Sightless cover designed by Kateri Kramer (www.katerikramer.com/design). As part of graduation from Regis University’s Mile-High MFA, students are gifted a framed

I graduated! I spent the past two weeks in Denver completing my final residency at Regis University’s Mile-High MFA. Over the last two years in

Stein on Writing – Using Markers to Characterize Chapter 5 of Sol Stein’s Stein on Writing describes a method of quickly giving depth to your characters using

The Fire in Fiction – Giving Characters Voice I’m going to do things a little different for today’s entry. First, I’m skipping comments for chapter

The Fire in Fiction – The “Easy” Stuff Why is it that some of the easiest-sounding writing advice is the easiest to forget when you’re

The Fire in Fiction – Protagonists As part of my MFA, I’m required to read a certain amount of books each semester. It’s one of

Dreaming Characters to Life I rarely have trouble falling asleep, but the other night I found myself caught in this disturbing loop where I’d drift

Start and start and start and… I can’t get more than a few pages through Steve Pressfield’s The War of Art before I want to come here

Resistance You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and

The War of Art There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s