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  Know Thyself & Write Like a Columnist: Finding Your Voice

  3677 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

  3248 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

  6019 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

  1474 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

  1508 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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  First Three Steps to Write a Book

  1442 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?

  3327 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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  Write and Be Merry- How to Make a Vocal Splash without Even Trying

  2838 readers BOO! OK so that’s all I got. That’s my splash. Spectacular wasn’t it? Kidding. Seriously though, all this labor and angst over finding your “voice” as a writer… does it really have to be so damn hard all the time? (Hint: OF COURSE IT DOESN’T.) Sorry, was I shouting? Forgive me, it’s all the pent up passion y’know. Wreaks

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

  11532 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...

• The Lyric Sheet: Here We Go Magic – “Over the Ocean”

  6552 readersOVER THE OCEAN over the ocean / thought I heard voices / reflected voices / satellite message / isn’t it something, the realizing / silver dots marking, endless horizon / over the ocean, we’ll have a vodka / your card is left open so nothing can stop yah / so far so good so far