Dear Story Nurse, I've been working hard the last year on putting my work out there: shopping a fully edited novel round to agents, pitching and submitting short fiction/game writing and putting some stuff up for free. While I've had a good response when I have a direct audience (i.e. with my alpha readers, free … Continue reading #128: Writing for Money, Writing for Joy
novels
#97: Blocked on Book Two
You may need to spend more time with your other book and find closure of some kind with it before you embark on a new project. You may need to develop some kind of parting ritual that frees you to move on.
#84: Staying Focused Long Enough to Write a Novel
Until you make your abstract goal more solid and figure out what makes it personally meaningful to you, it will keep losing out to shiny new ideas.
#80: Adaptation and Creation
Today is the fifth Tuesday of the month, which means that my answer to this heartfelt letter is available exclusively to my Patreon patrons.
#77: Making Your Story the Length You Want
Writing marries intuition to intellect, and sometimes the intuition part means you just know when the thing is done and no amount of hacking at it will make it not be done.
#65: How (and Whether) to Write a Sequel
Writing a series means playing a long game, investing considerable time and effort up front in hopes of considerable returns down the road.
#23: Constructing a Satisfying Mystery
Satisfaction comes from sustained tension leading to a climax. The tension in a mystery is usually an unanswered question: who, why, or how.
#21: Stopping and Starting
Nothing gets in your way more than a creative writing degree and a lot of practice doing other kinds of writing, both of which fill your head with all sorts of ideas about what writing should be like.
NaNoWriMo: Reassuring Your Inner Critic
If you're feeling the urge to go back and fix (or despair over) what you've written already, and if it's getting in the way of powering on toward your goal and your deadline, this post is for you.
#16: When and How to Hire a Freelance Editor
The best editors act as therapists and teachers too; like therapy and education, being edited can be emotionally difficult and a challenge to your skills, but if you bring your A-game and ditch your ego, you'll get a whole lot out of it.
Story Hospital 