ARCHIVE FOR Craft Advice

Writers attending conferences - like last week's The Muse & The Marketplace 2021 - tend to react to the experience in one of two ways: despair or elation.

Camp #1 is overwhelmed with information. Too much of the advice they absorbed seemed contradictory or overly complicated. They’re not sure they even like agents and editors anymore. And dammit, if all those other attendees are trying to get published, how do they stand a chance? 

Author and GrubStreet instructor Katrin Schumann shares some tips and practical insight into how to present your work in the most compelling way possible for agents. You can learn more about this subject in Katrin's upcoming class "Time to Find an Agent: Perfecting Your Pitch" starting March 11th.

By Katrin Schumann

Editors often see projects at radially different stages of development. Truthfully, we sometimes see writing that is really, well, bad.

But does this mean it’s hopeless? When do you know if something is too "bad" to be worth fixing?

Of course, "bad" is a highly subjective term. Writing might seem "bad" to one reader, while another reader loves it

By Katrin Schuman

All writers are a crazy mixture of egotistical, manic, single-minded, optimistic on the one hand and sensitive, catastrophizing, scattered and pessimistic on the other - at least all the ones I know. How do we live and produce work in a world filled with such extremes? Especially now when our political and physical reality is so chaotic?

Are you finding it hard to write? We live in deeply unsettling times, and it's easy to get distracted by all that's going on in the world. Here's a brief list of ideas to jumpstart your writing and help you get out of your own head for a moment:

1) Apply to a writing contest. Years and years ago, I won a local short story prize, and it gave me the confidence I needed to keep plugging away at my writing