Day: July 12, 2024

We started side hustle writing books from shed – publishers rejected us but we’ve sold millions of copies with TikTok

CAROLINE PECKHAM and Susanne Valenti are proof of the power of BookTok. Ever since the sisters were little girls, they had dreamed of becoming authors. But like many budding writers, their manuscripts were rejected by dozens of publishing agents. Sign up for the Fabulous newsletter Your info will be used in accordance with our Privacy […]

Writing Creatively to Make Sense of the Times We Live In

Key points Studies show that the act of all kinds of writing hones our reflective abilities. Creative writing stretches our imagination, increases emotional resilience, and alleviates stress. Writers of nonfiction examine complex issues that are relevant to our times. Novelists examine the issues using characters as a vehicle for empathy. Studies show that the act […]

Writing Suspenseful Scenes: Techniques for Keeping Readers on the Edge of Their Seats

GoodIdeas – stock.adobe.com In the realm of literature, few elements captivate readers quite like a masterfully crafted suspenseful scene. It’s the literary equivalent of a roller coaster ride — heart-pounding, palm-sweating and utterly addictive. But what techniques do authors employ to create these nail-biting moments that keep readers glued to the page? Let’s delve into […]

Crooked Parallels: On Alice Munro, Andrea Skinner, and My Mother’s Failure to Protect Me

For Jonny Diamond the Separation of the Art From the Artist Isn’t the Question Shortly after she died, I wrote about Alice Munro and the way her life seemed to parallel that of my late mother’s (aside from the literary canonization). For me, Munro’s stories offered an uncanny window into the lives of my parents: […]

Ayeşgül Savaş on Creating Your Story’s Clock

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter— sign up here . In a letter to his friend John Fisher, the landscape painter John Constable writes that “it will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief […]

Two Authors, One Subject: Zoë Eisenberg and Rhaina Cohen on Writing Intimate Friendships

Novelist Zoë Eisenberg and journalist-turned-author Rhaina Cohen have something in common: they both published books about extraordinarily intimate friendships. Their debut books published in February of this year with strikingly similar titles— Significant Others (Eisenberg) and The Other Significant Others (Cohen). They talk about their books as “literary fraternal twins.” Cohen’s book, a work of […]

8 Novels About Toxic Relationships

Screenshot from Blue Valentine There is a reason we consume content about love, and it’s not only because of its relatability. No, I’d argue that love makes us selfish. We are all trying to decipher lovers lost and found, past and present, hoping that someone else’s experience might shed light on our own. We hope […]