In the face of such real and seemingly insurmountable financial barriers to do so, literary magazines—and I mean all of them, at least those who have been around for more than a year—can and should pay their contributing writers for their work.
Don’t be the person who reads it on their phone. Too many things can go wrong, and it’s distracting to watch someone repeatedly unlock the screen when it goes dark or constantly zoom in when they can’t see the tiny print.
A lot of the work of revision comes in the process of evaluating the rhythm of the sentences themselves, but if you’re reading the words out loud as you compose them, you’ll hear the false notes right away.
Language is probably the most important facet of creative nonfiction because it can take the most mundane of experiences and turn them into ideas that seem life-altering.
Sure, writers write to explore our beginnings, but they more often write to transcend them. Writers also write to contemplate the horrors that might have been or almost were.
It's frustrating and alienating for readers to feel like they should know what's going on but don't. They want to be grounded in a character, in a place, in a context.
Sometimes we’re so focused on producing those great works of art (or the weather is so foul) that we neglect the inspiration side of things. If your muse is uncooperative, she might just need a change of scene.
