With a certain loosening of restrictions we may have more external demands on our time, much as we had pre-pandemic. Remember the Before Times? Yes, there was a Before Time and there will be After Times. Or maybe, depending on your comfort level, you’re still hunkering down. No matter, if you’re so inclined, writing, be…
Author: Mandy Miller
Mandy Miller is a lawyer and editor at Literary Wanderlust. Her debut novel, States of Grace, A Grace Locke Mystery, will be published on April 1, 2021.
A Few Crafty Reminders
Recent social isolation has left us in our own bubbles with much less contact with other writers as sounding boards for our work. Living in an echo chamber, while it may make us productive in terms of word count (or not), may also have allowed us to drift back into bad habits we thought we…
The Dreaded Synopsis: A Few Tips
Synopsis. The mere mention of the word cues the impulse to run and hide or, at least, defer facing the synoptic music. Yet, there’s no getting away from the reality that a synopsis of your novel is an integral part of any submission and, along with a query and sample pages, is all an agent…
The Editor and the Onion: A Paradigm for Editing*
A common misconception about chaos is that it’s chaotic, meaning the object in question is out of control, disorganized, irretrievably confused. Every writer has been there—the letters swim on the page like aimless tadpoles, every word you’ve written screams “YOU SUCK!” You get the drift. But, despair not! It turns out “chaos,” as used in…
Off the Beaten Craft: 5 Writing Books You Might Not Have Heard Of
There are iconic writing craft books—think Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird or Stephen King’s On Writing. And then there are many “also rans,” books that may not have garnered the acclaim or audience of such bestsellers. But wait! These are gems. They may hide in the shadows because the craft book shelf is crowded to…