I think I was born with the creative bug. As a child I was always making something—paintings, crafts, songs, stories—and I get grouchy when creativity isn’t happening in my life. Two ingredients are really important for creativity to flourish, and they’re pretty difficult to find: time and headspace. I’m luckyContinue Reading
I have always struggled with the stress of trying to balance it all and with feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work there is to get done. It is a constant irritation to me that my website is out of date, my book promotion hit and miss, rather thanContinue Reading
by Sienna Tristen It took me five years to write my debut novel, The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming, and I credit it with both the total loss and the safeguarding of my sanity. It would be a different kind of writing, I knew from the start—slower, more introspective, more SocraticContinue Reading
by Anita Kushwaha Ernest Hemingway famously said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.” While this quote might seem a tad hyperbolic, it nevertheless speaks to the costs of leading an artist’s life. The deeply personal investment it takes to share partContinue Reading
My biggest emotional challenge is balancing writing with promotion. And frankly, I often feel it’s a challenge I’m not mastering. I find it difficult to carve out the time to write when I’m in the midst of promoting a book. I admire writers who seem to manage it all soContinue Reading
Without a doubt, I would have to say self-doubt is my biggest emotional challenge. I constantly question my capabilities and accomplishments. Surely this isn’t good enough. Surely no one cares. Why would anyone pay to read MY stories? On the very first day I held the hard copy of myContinue Reading
Writing is a truly bizarre profession. We lock ourselves away for weeks or months or years, with no way of knowing if what we’re working on will ever be worth any of that effort. One day, we’re sure we’re writing the greatest novel the world has ever seen, and theContinue Reading
Entering the indie universe back in late 2013 has been one of the greatest blessings in my life, but it initially wreaked havoc on my mental state. The reason? This never-experienced-before, desperate feeling of overwhelm that I wasn’t prepared for and had no idea how to process. Don’t get meContinue Reading
I wrote my first story in the first grade. It was about a monster who ate my baby sister, so I voyaged into the creature’s stomach, rescued her, then slayed the evil beast. The tale freaked out my teachers, but it started my strange journey into the world of writing.Continue Reading
For me, the biggest emotional challenge of being a writer is allowing myself to be vulnerable. Fiction writing is an introspective experience. The characters and their journeys exist in a deep, private part of me. Yes, they’re entirely fiction, and yet they feel completely real. I experience their emotions whileContinue Reading
The biggest emotional challenge I struggle with would probably be self-doubt. It’s very intimidating to send off your writing for others to read and judge, and sometimes hate. I put a lot of myself into my writing and my characters and I hold them very dear. Having someone read it,Continue Reading
For me, different parts of my writing journey have brought different challenges. When I first started writing professionally (in 2007) I struggled to balance it all. While that has remained a challenge to this day, (I pair freelance writing which pays the bills with book writing which doesn’t…yet!), now IContinue Reading