by Suzanne Lieurance Perfectionism and writer’s block are closely linked, and the connection shows up most often in one specific habit: editing a sentence before you’ve finished writing it. You sit down to write. You type a sentence. You read it back. You change a word, then another, then you delete the whole thing and…
by Suzanne Lieurance A mentor text is a piece of writing you study — not to copy, but to learn from. It’s the novel you keep on your desk while drafting your own, the essay you reread to figure out how the writer built that ending, the song you play on repeat trying to understand…
by Suzanne Lieurance Each month we feature a writing challenge that is the theme for the entire month — and all our content is based on that theme. Each monthly theme builds on the previous one, so be sure to look back at each theme for this year, no matter when you are reading this….
by Suzanne Lieurance Most advice about how to set writing goals focuses on the beginning of a month — the blank calendar, the fresh intentions, the optimism of a new start. Very little of it focuses on what happens at the end: how you take what you actually built during one month and carry it…
by Suzanne Lieurance Imposter syndrome for writers is one of the most common — and most quietly damaging — obstacles between a writer and the work they’re meant to share. You write. You show up. And then, almost automatically, you soften the claim: “I’m sort of working on a book.” “I’ve been doing a little…
by Suzanne Lieurance Most writers have one. The piece that almost stayed hidden. The essay that felt too raw to publish, that you revised seventeen times not because it needed more revision but because revision kept it safely in progress. The story you submitted once, got a rejection, and nearly retired to a drawer. The…
by Suzanne Lieurance The end of a focused month always presents the same quiet risk: you built something real during June, and then July arrives with its own demands, and the habit you were tending quietly disappears. It doesn’t have to go that way. But keeping a habit alive past the month that created it…
by Suzanne Lieurance Many writers have the talent to succeed. They have ideas. They have notebooks full of story concepts. They have writing books on their shelves and courses on their computers. Yet year after year, they still struggle to finish what they start. Meanwhile, other writers seem to make steady progress. They finish manuscripts,…
by Suzanne Lieurance One of the most common reasons writers don’t submit isn’t that they don’t want to. It’s that they don’t know where to send their work — and the research feels overwhelming before it even begins. The literary market is large and varied, and no writer is expected to know all of it….
by Suzanne Lieurance Some writing is easy to share. The essay about craft, the piece about your neighborhood, the story that borrows only loosely from life. You finish it, you send it out, and the vulnerability is manageable. And then there’s the other kind. The piece that holds something real — a loss, a relationship,…
by Suzanne Lieurance Most writers who want to submit more don’t have a motivation problem. They have a system problem. They wait until a piece feels finished enough, then spend a few scattered hours researching markets, then lose momentum and move on to something else. The submission never goes out. Or it goes out once…
by Suzanne Lieurance If the word “platform” makes you feel tired before you’ve even started, you’re not alone. Platform has become one of the most loaded words in the writing world. It conjures follower counts and posting schedules and the exhausting sense that you need to be everywhere at once, performing your writerly self for…
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