How do you begin a blog post you never wanted to write? How do you type the very words you never wanted to see again? How do you convince yourself that there's anything good or fair or right in the world when you get the news that your loved one has cancer? Again. I don't [...]
Have you ever wanted something in your life so badly you can't imagine living without it? Have you ever felt that if someone just gave you a chance, you know you could succeed? This? Is every writer I know. Every dreamer. We write, we create. We make real our fantasy worlds, give breath to characters [...]
How do you sum up a weekend adventure that had approximately 865,342 high points? I'm not sure I can, but I'll at least attempt to highlight a few moments that made my time at the #UCIJretreat2021 amazing and memorable and oh-so-worth-it. (That's Unforgettable Characters & Incredible Journeys, in case you were wondering.) A few months [...]
Sometimes the writing journey is nothing more than a measure of how much you believe in you. Friends, I believe in you. Keep going.
We almost bought a brand new house today. Drove an hour and a half northeast and spent all day touring a beautiful, half-built, small mansion in a spacious 1-acre wooded lot in the Poconos. Then we deliberated long hours on whether it was right, where we'd put the garden, the pool, the chicken coop, and [...]
Publishing is brutal. It's the first thing you learn as a new writer, and it's a lesson reiterated at every step along the way. From drafting to critiquing to querying to subbing. Brutal. All of it. Previously, my record on receiving a rejection for a query was thirty minutes from the time sent. Thirty minutes. [...]
We don't talk enough about how difficult writing really is. I mean, as writers, we talk a lot about how much we love writing. Characters - yay! Plot - so good! Setting - build those worlds, Queen! Tropes - all the tropes! "I can't wait until you can all see what I see in my [...]
In a recent post, I wrote about critiquing others' works and getting feedback on my own work. In the last few days, I've been talking online with fellow querying writers, writers whose works I critiqued years ago, writers in my critique group, and writers whose work I continue to critique. And all of this has [...]
Not going to lie. The banning of a certain someone from social media this week has me letting out a breath I didn't know was holding. (I'm a YA author. You knew I had to use that phrase eventually, right?) There is still so much work to be done to right our listless ship of [...]
I head one of the local SCBWI critique groups in my county for Young Adult and Middle Grade authors and, friends, I must confess I feel a little guilty. Sometimes, this group seems like the L. Ryan Storms writing self-improvement hour. I get SO. MUCH. from my dear friends and our talks about what elements [...]
L. Ryan Storms 