You can read all the writing advice in the world, but in the end, it all comes down to how YOU approach the page or the screen. To help illustrate how we’re all just a little bit different, I’m taking a standard list of questions about writing and posing it to dozens of different writers. As you scroll though their answers, I think you’ll see we’re all as individual as fingerprints or snowflakes. And if you’re a writer who’d like to participate in this questionnaire, please email me.
Reading time: About 2 minutes According to Karen Sommerville, inspiration has the habit of showing up after she’s already started typing… Karen Sommerville is a certified fiction book coach and multi-published suspense author writing as Karen Dodd. Her thrillers transport readers to southern Italy, where murder has a habit of
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Reading time: About 2 minutes James Young likes to use a musical analogy for the act of writing: “There doesn’t have to be a “drum fill” after every verse or refrain; sometimes, you are just keeping the rhythm….” James Young spent 14 years as a staffer in the Senate and House,
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Mahtab Narsimhan says that she’s written in the morning for so long now, it’s become a firm habit and she feels as though something is missing if she doesn’t do it. Mahtab Narsimhan is an internationally published, award-winning author of 25 critically acclaimed books in
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Vansh Malhotra says that “done” is better than perfect because you can always revise a rough draft, wheras you can’t revise a blank page… Vansh Malhotra has been writing poetry, creative nonfiction, and, more recently, a hybrid of lyric and narrative poems. His curiosity about
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Reading time: About 2 minutes Karen E. Osborne used to think that making things up was way more fun than doing research. But writing her historical novel, True Grace, taught her to appreciate a step she’d previously scorned… Karen E. Osborne is an award-winning author of suspense and social-issue fiction,
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Reading time: About 2 minutes An unrepentant “binge writer,” Ruth F. Stevens sometimes has to force herself to take breaks when she’s deeply embroiled in a writing project… Ruth F. Stevens is author of the award-winning South Bay Series, My Year of Casual Acquaintances and The Unexpected Guests. She is
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Reading time: About 2 minutes The hard part of writing for Gail Ward Olmsted is not the writing! Instead, it’s all the marketing activities — and she started her working life as a marketer… Gail Ward Olmsted was a marketing executive and a college professor before she began writing fiction
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Reading time: About 2 minutes According to Rae Knightly, the strategy that best sells any author’s first book is writing and publishing the second… Rae Knightly is an award-winning author of science fiction and adventure for teenagers. She is best known for her Alien Skill Series (which fans affectionately call
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Reading time: About 3 minutes Frank DeRuosi is a big believer in the maxim, “write what you know.” He says it creates a more realistic environment for the characters and the readers… Frank DeRuosi grew up in East Boston, Massachusetts, where he lived for 26 years before moving to Philadelphia,
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Reading time: About 1 minute When asked to choose a motto for writing, Iris Hattersley picks: “Keep going when the going gets tough.” Iris Hattersley says she has always enjoyed the study of the English language, and a day doesn’t go by that she doesn’t read. While working on her
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