Early drafts may include grammatically correct and acceptable WHITs in small doses, but most writing becomes burdened by dozens if not hundreds of vague words per chapter, essay, and entire manuscripts. The opportunity arises to amplify and develop tone, mood, plot, setting, and characters by replacing WHIT vague placeholders with concrete and visual verbs and nouns within active sentence structures.  ..read more

Below is a listicle on how to create a composition that will catch and keep an editor’s attention. the Jesuit priests didn’t care I’m not Catholic nor have I stepped foot in Australia. They liked the advice I was giving. Markets are everywhere. Be persistent in submitting. Yet, first know what you are doing when you create your piece ..read more

Although this was true mostly because I didn’t know many other writers at seven years old, this brazen confidence did not stay with me long. As a kid, I fearlessly shared my poetry with anyone who wanted to listen to it, and many who didn’t. But as I grew, I began to feel guarded about my poetry, fearing the reactions, fearing the poems weren’t any good, didn’t say anything new, or revealed too much. I knew, though, that this was no way to write, that the writing that most profoundly impacted me was most likely the scariest for that author to share. I wanted to get back to a place where I had ..read more

It was an homage to my mother, who had lost her battle with cancer after a double mastectomy and brutal napalm for the body chemotherapy. My father was alone now. My childhood home outside NYC was under contract to be sold so we had to move, and the Florida home she picked out was also. We had no choice but to leave our home and neighborhood behind. The idea had been to get her out of the rat race and move closer to the beach, where she could rehabilitate. My father had quit his job at a prominent college to become her nurse. She was skin and bones and would often fall, struggling on her way t ..read more

The key to getting your writing noticed is to develop your voice. Like the voice of a great singer, a writer’s voice has its own character and energy. Think about it: you can always tell when Rhianna, Kelly Clarkson, or Barbra Streisand is singing just from listening to the first few notes ..read more

As a small child, I couldn't articulate my existential worries.  This made me feel even more insubstantial ..read more

Advice comes and goes. The best advice today is out of vogue tomorrow. Nonetheless, there are certain cliched opinions that are evergreen. One— my dad used to say decades ago— I still go by. The other one is a quotation by a famous French literary elite from another century ..read more

Writing has always come naturally to me. Growing up, I used to fill notebooks with short stories and scripts for school plays. Writing was fun, satisfying, and most importantly, easy. Art class, on the other hand, was definitely not my forte. Take, for example, the time I had to sculpt a head out of papier-mâché. My classmates all achieved varying levels of success, but I could not for the life of me create anything vaguely resembling a head. Eventually I gave up, made a spiky ball, colored it bright pink and purple, and told the teacher it was an alien hedgehog. When it came to drawing, my gr ..read more

As I slowly realized the powerful impact historical fiction could have on readers, discontent began to fester in my mind. I was the author of two successful political science textbooks. But no student ever told me that my textbook had touched them viscerally the way that a novel could.  what it had been like for the people in the story to live through the confrontations of their day. One young woman became enthused with a novel about the late 1940s and revealed her wish to have lived in those days.  ..read more

First, here’s my recent story about fashion:   of Myrtle Beach and then diagram it, so-to-speak, to show why it’s funny. Many folks don’t think they can compose funny stuff because they’re not funny naturally. I’m not sure if you have to be funny to write funny. I’m from New Jersey originally. You must be funny if born there. So, writing comical schticks isn’t hard for meet but certain gimmicks can be learned. Applying them creates humor in a piece, which always makes an author more winsome. Applying make-up will enhance what’s there. (Have you ever seen Hollywood actresses ..read more