How Free Writing Can Help You Find Your Subject

In this post, GrubStreet Instructor Ben Berman models the process of how journaling and free writing can help you figure out the subject beneath your subject.
It’s two in the morning when your five-year-old wakes you up and tells you that her belly is too full to sleep.
Try lying on your left side, you say. But she insists that she is going to be sick.
Ben Berman
Starting from Scratch: Staring Down the Blank Screen

Katrin Schumann asks, what happens when, after a long time writing and editing, you once again find yourself at the beginning of an entirely new project?
Some of you have been writing for a long time, and you likely have a manuscript or two going already. You may be astonished by how long it's taking to get your writing to where you want it to be—and perhaps you're learning about the utterly transformative power of deep editing.
Katrin Schumann
Why Creativity Requires Both Playfulness and Discipline

Inspiration is wonderful, but it doesn't go far on its own. In this post, Grub Instructor Ben Berman explores the push-and-pull of inspiration and productivity.
Whoever said there’s no such thing as a free ride hasn’t met my five-year-old.
Whenever it’s time to walk home from some outing she will start to deflate like a football in New England and will refuse to take another step forward until I hoist her over my head and onto my shoulders so that she can bounce up and down as we walk home, picking leaves off the trees or pretending that she’s …
Ben Berman
Make Room for Surprise in Your Writing

There’s nothing wrong with writing what you know. But in this post, Grub Instructor Ben Berman looks at how the writing process also offers us the opportunity to discover what we know.
My five-year-old always protests whenever she sees me bring out my poetry bag—the briefcase I use when I go out for readings—knowing that I won’t be home in time to tuck her in.
Ben Berman
First Time Authors Share Seven Things that Surprised Them After Selling Their Books

The traditional publishing process can be full of surprises for a first-time author. Here's what a few writers publishing in 2019
We make all sorts of assumptions about what it will be like to actually become published authors for the first time