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Get it done. Many people have brilliant ideas for books. Hardly anyone settles down to the task of actually writing those books. So much of writing is about the...

A Prompt From: Naima Coster

One of the great pleasures in meeting new people is trying to figure out who they are beneath the narrative they’re giving of themselves. I love to pay attention...

A Prompt From: Jesse Q Sutanto

Aim low. This is the best advice I can give to any writer. When I first started writing, I thought my first draft had to be a masterpiece, something...

A Prompt From: Emily Henry

I spent years mistaking a fear of failure for writer’s block. I’d get twenty-thousand words or so into a draft, and have no idea what came next. It got...

A Prompt From: Mhairi McFarlane

Give your characters real problems, and let them make big mistakes. Not a Hollywoodish simulacrum of a problem, which are fixed by being brave, honest and nice enough. Pose...

A Prompt From: Carole Johnston

A screenwriter friend of mine once gave me an invaluable writing tip that I find myself using for every story I write, be it short-form or long. If you...

A Prompt From: Claire Fuller

When I put one of my characters in a place that they know, I always try to be aware of how they have informed it and how it informs...

A Prompt From: Maggie O'Farrell

Beginnings are hard. The blizzard-white emptiness of the page in front of you, the empty document with the patiently waiting cursor: they can conspire to give you such awful vertigo...