Do you find that you hate your writing lately? You look back over those pages full of the words you’ve written and become overwhelmed with the urge to light a huge bonfire. “Twenty thousand words and a good handful of chapters in,” says author J. M. Frey, “and I hatedContinue Reading

For me, different parts of my writing journey have brought different challenges. When I first started writing professionally (in 2007) I struggled to balance it all. While that has remained a challenge to this day, (I pair freelance writing which pays the bills with book writing which doesn’t…yet!), now IContinue Reading

Could your character traits really determine how well you succeed as a writer? According to recent research, they could. After following thousands of people over a period of decades, economist and researcher James Heckman and colleagues found that perseverance, good study habits, and the ability to collaborate were more importantContinue Reading

The biggest emotional challenge of being a writer occurred when I was shopping an older draft of my first Skylar Robbins mystery, Skylar Robbins: Secret Agent. It took weeks, even months to hear back from prospective agents, and they hated it when an author submitted simultaneously to more than one.Continue Reading