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For all you writers struggling somewhere in the middle of your manuscript, here are five tips to get you to the end. 1) Create a deadline for yourself. Think of a practical timeframe to complete ...

I believe there is something we writers are collectively seeking. We are all attempting to convey an experience, a true moment, to tell a story that somehow reveals more than what we thought we. ...

A lot of writers want to dive right into their first drafts and start amassing pages. Though there are those novelists who claim not to outline, upon questioning (and I’ve asked many of them) I ...

“Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his ...

For any writer, here’s a question to ask yourself: “Why do I want to write this novel?” A student told me recently that he was writing his first novel in order to sell it for a lot of money. Though ...

OK writers, you’ve begun working in earnest. The story is alive, your cylinders are firing. You’re getting up every morning and putting in the hours. But then, something happens. Life delivers a ...

Our story asks everything of us. If it didn’t, we would never surrender. How often do we live our lives as though we were not going to die? We make choices and even avoid opportunities out of fear. ...

A director told me once that if you put two actors together in a scene without directing them or staging the scene, the conflict would likely begin to diminish. If the actors were on opposite sides ...

“Did I write today?” This is the only question you need to ask yourself at the end of the day. Nothing else matters, not the dishes, the oil change, or returning your buddy’s call to go ...

  In a thrilling display of solidarity, the 90-Day Novelists finished their first drafts a couple of weeks ago and have begun their rewrites. The first draft was about diving into the unknown, ...

Tod Goldberg is the author of the novels Living Dead Girl (Soho Press), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Fake Liar Cheat (Pocket Books/MTV), and the popular Burn Notice series, ...