What to Do After Attending a Writing Conference

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?
Katrin Schumann
Countdown to Muse 2021: Small Victories by Mary C. Curtis

The Muse and the Marketplace 2021 is almost here! This year's conference is taking the form of a virtual enhanced writing residency (taking place Wednesday, April 21st - Sunday, April 25th) with new Premium Workshops and the Manuscript Mart (taking place Wednesday, April 28th - Sunday, May 2nd).
This year's conference theme is "Small Victories." We all know what the "big" victories are (landing an agent, snagging a book deal, or getting a flashy award), but this year we aim to celebrate the equally important, tiny, and often unseen victories of our writing lives. In anticipation of the conference, …
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Can an Editor "Fix" Really Bad Writing?

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
Katrin Schumann
Being a "Good Enough" Writer is a Brilliant Strategy

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?
Katrin Schumann
What Writers Do in Times of Crisis

By Katrin Schumann
I sat down to write this post and have now written four openings and ditched them all.
What do writers need to hear in times like this? How can I be helpful to others when that which binds us--our obsessive love of words, books, writing--is overshadowed so universally by our fear of the unknown?
Do I tell you how to make lemons out of lemondade?* Do I reveal that I'm writing page after page despite the uncertainty and boredom
Katrin Schumann
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