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  Know Thyself & Write Like a Columnist: Finding Your Voice

  3348 readersToday on Fuel Your Writing, writer and blogger Marya Zainab helps us find our voice. ——————————————————————————————————————————– Define Your Voice I’ll go first. My voice is: colloquial, casual, concise, friendly, inviting, inspiring (hopefully), thoughtful, comic (fingers crossed), self deprecating, quirky. My voice is not: businesslike, formal, authoritative, serious, snarky, cynical, offensive, zen-like,dark, dreamy, snobbish, lyrical, abstract, literary, perfect. Now, it’s your turn.

• Invisible Tension

  2540 readersThis post by agent Donald Maass officially kicks off our month of “best advice” here at WU. Enjoy! Invisible Tension Don’t you hate it? Literary authors get to write these beautiful passages that are poison in commercial novels. You know what I mean: those achingly gorgeous paragraphs in which absolutely nothing happens. What’s worse, sometimes

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  Top Five Rules of Crisis Communications

  5506 readers Top Five Rules for Crisis Communications and The Brilliance of Aflac’s New Silent Commercial Aflac recently fired the voice behind their duck, Gilbert Gottfried, for making horrible, off-color remarks about the Japanese after the recent earthquake and tsunami. Not only did Aflac immediately fire Gottfried, they also stopped airing all their TV ads. In late

• Switching voices

  1383 readersI know a thing or two about writing in multiple voices. My day job as a feature writer and editor requires me to write in a standard journalistic voice.   Before I was hired by Working Partners to write YA novels, I wrote historicals.  The First Daughter series is heavy on contemporary teenage lingo, like, OMG yannow?.  And now I’ve

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  5 Days, 5 Ways to Enhance Your Writing Skills

  1376 readersAdvice is a good thing, helpful advice is even better and advice that you can use and implement over a period of time is the best. I love gathering helpful writing tips and tricks from others in the field, however, if you’re like me you’ll come across a list that has several great things you

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  Song of the Day: Thee Oh Sees – “I Need Seed” | 05.06.11

  7862 readersListen: Thee Oh Sees – “I Need Seed” This is a gritty tunes that makes me think of adjectives like gritty, as well as jaunty and poppy. I want to hear this album now. “I Need Seed” is off of their record Castlemania, whi...

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  First Three Steps to Write a Book

  1296 readersBy Terri RainsWriting a book can be an intimidating process, especially for a first-time author. Before you delve any further into the project, take a few preliminary steps to write a book.Step #1: Figure Out What You are Going to Write AboutThis may s...

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  What is Mainstream Fiction? Upmarket Fiction?

  2978 readersQ: The more industry blogs I read, the more confused I get about which category my novel falls into. It seems to sit on middle ground between literary and commercial, which some agents have said they are looking for. One agent advised me to call it "literary commercial." I have also seen this described as "commercial literary" and "mainstream." I

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  TalkOclock is an interesting way to wake up and meet new people!

  5437 readers  Hello my dear students! TalkO’clock enables people everywhere in the world to talk to each other, create new friendships and reconnect with old friends. They break down the walls of traditional social networks by connecting people who would never meet otherwise. Their unique approach is to use voice, person to person, rather than text because

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  How to Find Your Writing Voice

  1898 readersWhen you’re a writer or a blogger, you’re putting your voice out there. It’s a lot like standing on stage singing your heart out for all the world to see. But figuring out your writing voice isn’t easy. It’s especially hard for new writers to find their writing voice, because they already feel awkward having