by Melinda Rucker Haynes I love to laugh so I always open with—I learned to write fiction when I was a grant writer. In that reality, we also used to joke that grant proposals were judged by the weight. Therefore, repetitive and wordy details, explanations, descriptions, and narratives (much likeContinue Reading
Self-doubt by far is the biggest emotional hurdle I deal with. It creeps up on me right before I publish something—whether it’s a book or a blog post. I really have to talk myself through it right before I hit that publish button. Fortunately, it hasn’t ever completely derailed myContinue Reading
I’ve wrestled with self-doubt, especially since I used to compare myself to other, more experienced, writers. When I wrote my first book, I expected certain people in my life to be happy for me, but instead, they didn’t even acknowledge my accomplishment. That hurt me. Anxiety also torments me fromContinue Reading
It takes a certain kind of person to slave over something very personal for a long time and then hurl it out the door for every aspiring critic in the universe to have a shot at. You trust your editor, your spouse, and your friends to give you helpful advice,Continue Reading
I had a dream to be the next Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind), Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), or J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye). What do these three writers have in common? They wrote one spectacular novel and were able to live off the royalties for theContinue Reading
My biggest emotional challenge as a writer has always been balancing writing with the need to pay the bills. I grew up in a working-class family. My parents had little extra money. I knew from an early age that I’d have to work at a job that paid. And sinceContinue Reading
Laying out the book on Amazon was my biggest challenge. I used one of their templates and thought it would be easy just to flow the text through. Nope. The template had many quirks, such as the top margin changing unexpectedly on me. I spent hours on the phone withContinue Reading
In 12 years I’ve had published 22 chapbooks and 3 books, with two chapbooks and one more book forthcoming next year. Hyper-productivity is a coping mechanism for brain noise, and an aid to processing. My biggest challenge in writing is getting that distance to see my work from other eyes.Continue Reading
After having three books in print through a traditional publisher, I decided I wanted more control over my work, so I decided to self-publish the fourth one. Going forward with this plan, I consulted with a publishing expert, Jane Friedman. She suggested that in advance of the book’s release, IContinue Reading
Self-doubt is the biggest emotional challenge for me. Writing is manageable to work through tough times and rejection, since it’s a way to escape the then-unpleasant world around me. As for writer’s block, I’ve been fortunate to experience it on a limited basis. Although I was once blocked about 14Continue Reading
The poet Robert Frost once said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” This sums up the emotional challenge of writing for me, which is to place myself so entirely in the world of my characters that readers experience their joy and sadness. A recent example fromContinue Reading
If I whittle away all my excuses, I’d have to say the two biggest issues are self-doubt and perfectionism in my work. Since my early teens, I’ve struggled with depression. Writing became a way to combat the darkness. It helped to sort out the confusion and the emotions that wantedContinue Reading