To Become a Better Writer

Welcome to my blog. I’m the series editor of The New Writer’s Handbook (Scarletta Press). The purpose of that annual anthology of many recent articles on writing as a craft and career is to help you write better . . . to share best advice & good thoughts from diverse successful writers.

This blog will offer additional ongoing tips and advice for your writing career. We’ll share ideas on how to become a better writer; how to pitch work to magazines, literary agents, and book publishers; and how to build a successful writing career, step by step.

A great career as a fiction or nonfiction writer, for children or adults, doesn’t happen overnight. It does advance with each bit of insight, each experience (positive and otherwise). It builds with each sentence written, each story crafted, and submitted, and rejected, until finally we find our readers, our publishers, our agents and mentors and literary partners.

Yes, they are out there; it’s just a matter of finding (quickly, or more often after some persistence) the right group of people to work with who share your tastes and appreciate your talents.

I want to be one of your partners in your endeavor to write and be published. Please share your thoughts freely and don’t hesitate to contact me directly with brief questions. You can contact me via my website, Great Lakes Literary.

I may not always have anything useful to share as a reply . . . but if I do, I will . . . as best I can.

To quote from my Afterword in The New Writer’s Handbook 2007: “To be a good writer, you need to do lots of diverse things. Some you’re naturally good at. For others, you need to stretch and listen and consider new ideas. There’s no right or wrong way to write, no ten easy steps. There are no initiation rites to take you into the dark hut and reveal the magic chants and secret knowledge. Writing isn’t logical, it’s a part of life.”

This blog will offer ideas about building a literary craft and career. I hope some portion of it helps. But as we say here in the Midwest, the proof is in the pudding.

I’ll close with a brief thought from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Words are also actions, as actions are a kind of words.”

When we write, we take action.
If we write well, we can make a real difference.

Thanks for visiting!