Guest Post

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Manage Your To-Do List with Todoist

An enthusiastic user explains the life-changing power of finding the right to-do app, making professional and personal task management a breeze.
Image: on a patch of dry earth amid withered stems of dead plants is an incandescent lightbulb, inside of which is a small bit of healthy soil and a tiny green plant growing.

More Than Setting: Centering Nature in Your Fiction

If the natural world is important to your story, be sure to engage it on a deeper level than descriptions of pretty scenery.
Image: a woman stands with a microphone in one hand and a marker in the other, prepared to make notes on a large pad of paper while giving a presentation to an audience in a well-lit modern office-style room.

Lay the Professional Groundwork for a Successful Nonfiction Book

If a nonfiction book is an immediate or distant goal, start thinking now about how to visibly position yourself as an expert in your topic.
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Self-Publishing Assistance Is Becoming Threatened

In an attempt to crack down on bad actors, KDP and IngramSpark have made it very difficult for anyone but the author to publish a book there.
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The Secret to Avoiding a Sagging Memoir Middle

The finest memoirs are distilled experiences: the more you compress, the more potent your story becomes.
Image: black and white photo of the author Madeleine L'Engle sitting in a chair and reading to her granddaughters Charlotte, who sits on L'Engle's lap, and Lena who sits on the chair's arm.

Planning for the Life of Your Work (Even If You’re Not Famous Yet)

Legacy planning is neither morbid nor presumptuous—it’s a sign of love for your work, your readers, and anyone who may one day carry your stories forward.
Image: author Laura Stanfill speaks into a microphone at the launch event for her new book Imagine a Door on April 1, 2025 at Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon.

Trust Your Instincts: Why Writing for Yourself Leads to Better Books

When we try to write something because we feel we ought to, not because we want to, we stack the deck against ourselves.
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Timely Yet Timeless: Crafting Nonfiction That Outlasts Current Events

In a world changing at breakneck speed, how do you prevent a researched nonfiction book from being outdated by the time it is published?
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AI Made Me Want to Trademark My Name. Here’s How I Did It.

How one author protected her brand without hiring a lawyer. It just takes time, patience, and a few hundred dollars.
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How to Budget for Your Book Launch

Each author’s budget is different, but these guiding principles can help frame your decisions about where to spend and where to save.
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Why All Authors Should Try Notion

Consolidating documents, tasks, decisions, and communication into this powerful app might dramatically simplify your writing project.
Image: a daiquiri cocktail and a freshly cut flower sit atop the bar next to the statue of Ernest Hemingway at El Floridita in Havana, Cuba.

Structural Mastery: Why the Classics Endure

Studying the structural choices in classic literature is one of the best ways to understand how story architecture fuels emotional impact.
Image: a young woman sitting on a park bench wears a look of dismayed incredulity at something she's just read in the book she holds open in front of her.

No Twists for Twists’ Sake: Earn Your Ending

When writing mystery or thriller, you earn your ending by properly laying the groundwork so that readers don’t feel cheated by plot twists.
Image: in the darkened stairwell of an old urban high-rise building is a blue neon sign reading "MORE THIS WAY" with an arrow pointing up the stairs.

The Silent Bestseller: How Some Self-Published Books Thrive Without Viral Marketing

Your book doesn’t have to be an overnight sensation. It just has to find its audience—and sometimes, that takes time.
Image: Scrabble-style tiles of the letters Y-O-U on a blue background.

If You Don’t Define and Present Yourself Online, Others Will Do It for You

We are storytellers, are we not? Let’s use that skill to our advantage when building the language of our websites to help readers find us.
Image: From the end of Disney's Small World ride, a group of highly-decorated and brightly-colored signs reading "Good bye" in different languages.

Exophonic Writing: Crafting Fiction in a Foreign Language

Writing in a non-native tongue—exophony—means letting go of certain habits and navigating cultural aspects without compromising one’s truth.
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Want to Write Faster? How Tracking Your Word Count Can Boost Your Productivity

Whether you write fiction, nonfiction, or memoir, tracking word count to measure your daily progress yields numerous benefits.
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Dodging the Scarcity Trap

The best way to support your book, especially in the nonfiction world, may be sharing your ideas freely long before the book appears in print.
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This Memoir Could Have Been an Email: Telling Your Story With Different Forms of Communication

Different forms of communication—letters, voicemails, social posts—can enrich your memoir, so long as they help tap into something universal.
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Sometimes It IS About the Research

One writer reflects on the importance of original reference material when a digitized version might be missing critical context.
The Biggest Memoir Mistake: When Too Much Backstory Derails Your Narrative

The Biggest Memoir Mistake: When Too Much Backstory Derails Your Narrative

Backstory in memoir works like a traffic light—stopping too often stalls your journey. Learn which past events truly serve your narrative.
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3 Little Words That Will Unlock Your Revision

Ensuring your stories are imbued with meaning can be a huge task. Luckily, three magic words will help you strengthen your story’s trajectory.
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A Tiny Tomato a Day Keeps Writerly Woes at Bay

When life’s too busy for the pomodoro technique to help you get writing done, try even smaller increments of time—or pomodorini.
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Too Intimidated (or Risk Averse) to Organize a Writing Retreat?

How one book coach decided to make the leap from attending writing retreats to hosting one herself.
Image: patrons are gathered in groups outside the Calabazas Branch Library Grand Opening event in San José, California in 2013.

The Humble Neighborhood Library: Why It Should Be Part of Your Book-Enthusiasm-Generating Plan

Since most readers don’t have an independent bookstore in their neighborhood, public libraries can be an ideal spot for author events.