ARCHIVE FOR Colwill Brown

There's a distinctly rebellious air about the Muse and the Marketplace Conference this year. Come April 6-8 at Boston's Park Plaza, #Muse18 presenters will be letting loose on the writing rules that have held our manuscripts hostage for far too long. To kick off the conversation ahead of the Muse weekend, this year's Muse series explores the writing, publishing, and workshop rules, conventions, and accepted norms that authors, agents, and editors at the Muse love to hate -- and why they'd love to see them broken. Some presenters will also offer their own rules or conventions that they want to see adopted in writing …

If, like nu metal rapper Fred Durst in the early aughts, you like your submission calls to keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin', then this is the post for you! Every month, we publish "Writing Life Essentials," a hand-curated list of contests, grants, scholarships, submissions calls, and awards, with a focus on opportunities that are at least one of the following: local, free to apply, and/or committed to celebrating and supporting writers from historically marginalized communities. These regular posts focus on upcoming deadlines, but we like to feature a limited number of rolling submissions as well. Once a rolling submission appears …

Some days, waiting for a new book's release is like waiting to step into a magical bookcase to explore the enchanted forest beyond. And some days, it's a stretch to justify the glossy, social media-friendly image. Today, both are true! The Grub office is gearing up for another winter freeze, and we're contemplating the books set for release in 2018 that we just can't wait to cosy up and hunker down with.

The January 2018 edition of "Writing Life Essentials," a monthly hand-curated list of contests, grants, scholarships, submissions calls, and awards, with a focus on opportunities that are at least one of the following: local, free to apply, and/or committed to celebrating and supporting writers from historically marginalized communities

'Tis the season to gaze back wistfully over a year of procrasti-clicking: In 2017, you checked in with GrubWrites no less than 40,000 times! We appreciate it and all, but ... shouldn't you be writing? J/K: reading the Grub blog IS writing. Well, nearly. This year, you discovered inspiration from your community, insight from fellow writers, fresh new fiction and nonfiction, the latest writer opportunities, and your next lit crush. Well done, you. Here's a look back at your top five posts for the year.

#1 Our Diploma is Your Published Novel: The Books of the Novel …