If part of your personal definition of writing success includes making a living from your writing, here’s the good news: you can build a successful career as an author in many ways. To do so, you must think of your work as a business. Your books are your products, and your readers are your customers—and books don’t sell themselves. Are you willing to adopt an entrepreneurial spirit to make a living from your writing?

Editing a novel listening aloud has definite benefits. Many reputable sources online point out the advantages of listening to or reading your work out loud, including this one from Poynter.org and this one from the writing center of The University of North Carolina among many others. Read on to learn the top seven benefits of listening aloud. These advantages may just change the way you edit novels.

Are you ready to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be in your writing life?

Last week, I published Build Your Best Writing Life, my first full-length book for writers. This book breaks down each of the essential strategies that have helped me slowly but surely work to become the writer I want to be over the past five years—strategies that are continuing to help me achieve this aim today. 

With the new year upon us, it’s time we take action to turn our resolutions into realities. If it’s your goal to build a writing life you love in 2020, then I’d love to break down the foundational strategies I share in my new book with you today.

Time. In this busy modern age, it feels like you’re always fighting the clock. You know it’s essential to make time to write. You can’t maintain a consistent writing practice without carving out time in your schedule for creative work. But how are you supposed to make that time when you have a career, a family, a home, and other responsibilities to address? 

As writers, it’s our job to craft fully-realized characters—characters that feel as real as the people around us. And like the people around us, this means our characters should be flawed.

Flaws and moral failings are, after all, an integral part of what it means to be human. Without these shortcomings, humanity would experience little conflict, triumph, or growth—all elements that define the stories we write. Simply put, for a character to feel real, they must share in our flawed humanity.

All writers experience creative frustration from time to time. But what if you experience creative frustration most of the time?

Maybe you’ve yet to finish a first draft after years of writing, always lured by the siren song of a new story idea not long after beginning the last. Maybe you’ve developed an idea you love, but you’re afraid of failing to do the story justice. Maybe you’ve been struggling to find the time or motivation to sit down and write.

The opening chapters of your story are doubtless some of the most important you’ll write.

When crafted with care, a strong opening sequence effectively hooks readers into your story, encouraging them to keep turning pages to learn more about your characters, plot, and story world. A poor opening sequence, on the other hand, can lead readers to toss your book aside in boredom or frustration before your story ever gets off the ground. 

Knowing the vital importance of a strong opening sequence, I jumped at the opportunity to work with freelance editor Isobelle Lans when she offered me her ‘First Three Chapters’ service in exchange for an honest testimonial and review. 

Looking for a few new tools and resources to inspire your writing life? Look no further!

Though it isn’t yet Black Friday, companies and creators across the internet have already begun sharing fantastic deals on workbooks, e-courses, apps, and other tools designed specifically with writers in mind. Today, I’m excited to share with you my favorite Black Friday deals for fiction writers, including sales on our resources here at Well-Storied. Take a peek:

From tentative first kisses to explicit sex scenes, intimacy in fiction can exist in many forms.

Included in that range is the popular fade-to-black, in which an intimate scene ends before anything too explicit happens on the page, nevertheless implying the characters share certain intimacies “off-screen.” A vulnerable conversation between friends or lovers can prove quite intimate as well, though today we’re going to stick to physical intimacies and how we can write them. 

Those awkward, cringe-worthy love scenes? Those are exactly what I’m going to show you how to avoid today, using techniques I’ve gleaned from Diana Gabaldon’s I Give You My Body.

Happy Monday, writers!

A few weeks ago, a freelance editor named Isobelle Lans reached out to ask if I’d like to participate in an interview about my personal writing life. Here at Well-Storied, I share the tools and techniques that have helped me develop my craft (and that can help you do the same), but I don’t often talk about the actual novels in which I put these insights into practice.

This is what Isobelle wished to discuss — my novels, the story world in which I write, and how both my life experiences and my work at Well-Storied have shaped both of these things. If this is something you’re interested in, stay tuned. Below, I’m sharing a sneak peek of the interview with a link to view the full copy over on Isobelle’s site, Inspired Lines Editing.

In recent months, I’ve had the privilege of working with two freelance editors to prepare my upcoming book for writers, Build Your Best Writing Life, for publishing. 

First, I worked with Sara Letourneau of Heart of the Story Editorial to complete a line edit, which helped ensure I was using the best possible language to convey each point in my book. I then worked with Sarah Kolb-Williams of KolbWilliams.com on a copy edit to further polish my writing. (I’ll also be working with Sarah later this month on a final proofread of the book.)

Before these occasions, I hadn’t worked with a professional editor in any capacity. Because I knew so little about the process, I was nervous to dive in. Still, I braved the experience because I knew that working with professional editors was essential if I wanted to prepare the best possible book to share with the world.

In the end, I couldn’t have asked for two better first experiences, which were in large part due to choosing the best freelance editors for me and my manuscript — but that’s not what we’re going to discuss today. (If you’re looking for tips on choosing a great editor, make sure to check out Sara Letourneau’s recent guest post on this subject).

Rather, today I’m going to help you have a fantastic first time working with a freelance editor by breaking down everything you need to know before getting started. If you’re feeling nervous or confused about the process, this is the blog post for you.

I’m often asked when I plan to publish my first novel, or how my work on that novel is coming along, and I’m incredibly grateful to know there are readers out there eagerly awaiting my fiction debut. If you’re one such reader, thank you! 

But on occasion, I’m asked a different question about my general lack of publishing experience: “What gives you the right to give writing advice when you aren’t even published? You’re not an author. Why should anyone trust you?”

This is by no means a common occurrence for me, but it does happen from time to time, usually once or twice a year. And every time I’m asked this question, I get to thinking about creative validation and what it really means to be a writer.