I have this embarrassing habit of writing notes to myself in my writing notebooks or even in my Word documents. The result is a bunch of random, mini journal entries mixed in with my other writing/research. And since they’re scattered everywhere with the care of a crazy person, I always run the risk of leaving [...]

You know how it is when you’re working on something, whether it’s an article or a novel or story or whatever, and you’ve gone through several drafts and you feel it’s close, really close, to being finished, but then you give it another read-through and uncover even more problems? Fancier, trickier, more subtle problems? And [...]

Why is finding typos apparently one of the greatest joys humankind can experience? I’ve noticed it in all sorts of situations, from all kinds of people. Everyone loves to identify, announce, and then congratulate themselves for sniffing out typos. Once, I had to present a publication design in a meeting (at a long-ago job, not [...]

I found this on the American Literary Review‘s blog — Zach VandeZande, the journal’s assistant fiction editor, offers a glimpse into what it’s like to have to reject great stories and how he wishes he could reach out to the writers who impress him: The heartbreaking job of the assistant fiction editor “The upside is [...]

Someone recently asked which rejection was the worst I’d ever received. I had to think about that for a little while. Over the years, I’ve collected a multitude of rejections. Many of them, especially the lit mag rejections, didn’t faze me at all, while others stung for all sorts of reasons. But I kept coming [...]

When I got serious about submitting my work last December, I knew I’d be spending a lot more time (and money) at the post office. Eventually, I fell into a routine and began frequenting one particular post office where the same employee rung me up time after time. Since my manila envelopes were always addressed [...]

My husband and I recently traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a weekend getaway. As we crossed the state border and left Ohio behind us, I remembered something about my second novel — a manuscript I hadn’t  thought about in ages. “Oh my god,” I said. “I set my second novel in Michigan.” While he’d [...]

I’ve been a member of almost too many writing groups to count. I’ve been in large, community-based groups with more than 20 participants in each workshop, and I’ve been in groups with only three people. I’ve met in libraries, in universities, in homes, in coffee shops, in restaurants, and in an abandoned (?) futon factory. [...]