Tag: Creative writing

Ask the Author

Ask the Author: Can I really become a published author?

Mandy Webster

Dear Mandy,

So this is kind of random, but I wanted to be an author as a teenager and kind of gave up because it was made out to be impossible by the adults in my life. Is getting something published realistic?

A writer’s desk with a globe, maps, travel photographs, a pen and notebook, and a stack of books labeled “Write,” “Revise,” “Submit,” “Publish,” and “Repeat.” A handwritten note reads, “People like us don’t do things like that,” while the notebook reads, “Same dream. Different path. Still possible.
Becoming an author may not be the most practical path according to someone else’s definition of practical—but if writing is the path you’re meant to follow, it’s worth finding your way there.
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Answer:
Yes.

Seriously. That’s the short answer. And I know that answer because I spent a lot of my own life believing the opposite. When I was a kid, my grandmother had a wall of old National Geographic magazines. I would sit and page through them, fascinated by the photographs and the stories of places I had never seen. I dreamed of writing for National Geographic someday. I wanted to travel the world and write about the things I saw.

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Writers on Writing

How to create your own creative writing retreat on a budget

Mandy Webster

Sometimes the best way to get more writing done is to stop trying to write at home. I know that sounds strange. After all, home is where most of us write. But home is also where the laundry needs to be folded, the dishes need to be washed, the dog needs to go outside, and the cat has decided that whatever you’re doing is less important than paying attention to them while they rest their behinds on your keyboard. Even when those things aren’t urgent, they’re always there in the back of your mind.

A ramshackle gray barn, rolling hills, and fog settling over the mountains—the perfect backdrop for my most recent creative writing retreat.

That’s one reason I’ve become such a fan of getting away for writing retreats. I’ve been taking long weekend writing getaways for several months now, and I’m amazed at how much work I can accomplish when I remove myself from my everyday environment. The trick is that these don’t have to be expensive, organized writing retreats. You can create your own.

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Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions: What Will Become of Us?

Mandy Webster

Elderfly Press is seeking submissions for a new anthology of stories and poetry exploring an unsettling question: What will become of us?

Submissions for What Will We Become of Us? are open through December 15, 2026.

We are living through a period of enormous uncertainty. The world around us is changing rapidly, and the future can sometimes feel impossible to predict. The institutions we rely on are shifting. Technology is transforming how we work and communicate. Economic pressures affect where and how we live. The environment is changing. Political and social divisions seem increasingly difficult to bridge. At the same time, individuals are constantly navigating their own smaller transformations: growing older, falling in love, losing someone, starting over, becoming parents, leaving home, changing careers, discovering who they are, or realizing that the person they thought they would become is no longer who they are.

So, we want to ask the question: What will become of us?

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Writers on Writing

Why fiction can be more powerful than nonfiction when we need to understand social issues

Mandy Webster

Facts matter. We need historians, journalists, researchers, documentaries, investigative reporting, firsthand testimony, and all the other forms of nonfiction that help us understand what actually happened in the world. Facts are essential. Without them, we cannot distinguish history from mythology, evidence from propaganda, or reality from the stories people tell themselves. But sometimes, facts aren’t enough.

Graphic: Why fiction can be more powerful than nonfiction when we need to understand social issues
Facts tell us what happened. Fiction helps us understand what it felt like.
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Sometimes we can know a fact without really understanding it. We can know that human beings were enslaved. We can know that people were displaced from their homes. We can know that women living under oppressive governments lose rights and opportunities. We can know that war changes ordinary people’s lives. We can know that trauma can be passed from one generation to another. And yet we can still struggle to understand what any of those things actually mean to the people experiencing them. That is where fiction can do something extraordinary.

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Writers on Writing

Intentional ambiguity vs. confusion: How to use ambiguity effectively in novel writing

Mandy Webster

There is an important difference between a story that deliberately leaves some things unanswered and a story that leaves readers unsure what is happening because the narrative has not given them enough information. Both kinds of stories can be confusing, but they create very different kinds of confusion. One invites interpretation; the other makes it difficult to understand the story at all.

This distinction matters because writers are often encouraged to trust their readers. We are told not to over-explain, not to resolve every mystery, and not to tell readers exactly what a story means. That is good advice when the writer is deliberately creating ambiguity. It becomes bad advice when the writer uses “ambiguity” to excuse a story that is simply difficult to follow.

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Ask the Author

Ask the Author: What do you do with your first draft?

Mandy Webster

Dear Mandy,

I’m curious as to what other writers do when starting their second draft. Do you trash what you wrote in draft one and start totally from scratch? Or do you take some of what you wrote in the first draft and refine it? Or something else entirely? How does it work for you?

A first draft doesn’t have to be good. It just has to give you something to work with. The messy parts, the awkward scenes, the holes in the plot—they’re all part of the process. The magic happens when you give yourself permission to write badly enough to find the story.

Answer:
For me, the answer is pretty simple: I revise my first draft.

I know some writers who essentially start over when they reach the second draft. They might keep the basic idea, characters, or plot, but the actual manuscript gets tossed aside and they write the book again from the beginning. And honestly, I can see the appeal. Sometimes a first draft teaches you so much about the story that you realize the book you originally thought you were writing isn’t actually the book you want to write. But that’s not generally how I work.

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Writers on Writing

Why epistolary novels are so difficult to write well

Mandy Webster

Epistolary novels tell their stories through “found” documents such as letters, journals, emails, text messages, and medical files, but creating a compelling narrative from those fragments is far more difficult than it appears.

Graphic: The challenges of writing epistolary novels
Epistolary novels tell their stories through “found” documents like letters, journals, emails, text messages, and case files—but creating an authentic, engaging narrative from those fragments is one of fiction’s greatest writing challenges.
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The format can be immersive, creative, and deeply personal when it works. When it doesn’t, it often feels forced, repetitive, or strangely artificial. That’s one reason I tend to approach epistolary novels with a healthy dose of skepticism. Every once in a while, I read one that completely wins me over, but more often than not, I find myself wishing the author had simply told the story conventionally instead. Recently, I read The Brides by Charlotte Cross, and its successful use of the epistolary format reminded me how difficult this type of novel is to write well.

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Writers on Writing

Everyone says you’re writing your novel wrong: They’re not all right.

Mandy Webster

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer in possession of a novel manuscript in progress must be in want of writing advice. If you’ve ever gone looking for advice about how to write a novel, you’ve probably discovered one of the great truths of writing: for every person who confidently tells you there is a right way to do something, there is another person who will confidently tell you they’re completely wrong—especially if you ask the question of social media.

Everyone has an opinion about the “right” way to write a novel. But what works for one writer, genre, audience, or school of thought may not work for another. The trick is figuring out what you believe a story is supposed to do—and finding the advice that actually serves your goals. There’s no single right way to write a novel. There’s only the way that works for the story you’re trying to tell.
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Plotters will tell you to outline. Pantsers will tell you that outlining kills the magic. One writing teacher will tell you that you should never use adverbs, while another will remind you that adverbs are perfectly legitimate words. Someone will insist that you must start your novel with action, while someone else will tell you that the reader needs time to settle into the world and meet the characters. And then there’s the Oxford comma.

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Writers on Writing

You might be starting your novel in the wrong place

Mandy Webster

One of the most common mistakes writers make has nothing to do with dialogue, pacing, or grammar. It happens before the story has even had a chance to get going. They’ve started the novel in the wrong place. The frustrating part is that this mistake is almost impossible to see while you’re writing your first draft. You know your characters. You know their histories. You know why everything matters. Naturally, you begin where the story begins—for you.

Graphic: You might be starting your novel in the wrong place
There are lots of places you could start a story—but if you want someone to keep reading your novel, you have to start it in the right place. The real challenge isn’t finding a beginning, it’s finding the beginning that pulls the reader in.

But readers aren’t you. Readers don’t need every step of the journey. They only need to enter the story at the moment it becomes impossible for your protagonist to keep living the life they had before.

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Ask the Author

Ask the Author: How do I share my work without having it stolen?

Mandy Webster

Dear Mandy,

How do I share my work without having it stolen?

The question isn’t really, how do I share my work without having it stolen? The real question is: What makes you think anyone wants to steal your work?

My answer: Oh, precious. Do you really think the word vomit you’ve dumped into your Google Doc is worth stealing?

Graphic: Worried someone will steal your novel if you let other people read it? Here's the truth: your ideas aren't what make your story valuable—your execution is. Don't let fear keep you from getting the feedback that will make your writing stronger. Share your work with people you trust, use a little common sense, and keep writing.
Worried someone will steal your novel if you let other people read it? Here’s the truth: your ideas aren’t what make your story valuable—your execution is. Don’t let fear keep you from getting the feedback that will make your writing stronger. Share your work with people you trust, use a little common sense, and keep writing.

Probably not. My rough drafts aren’t worth stealing either. As plenty of famous authors have said over the years, first drafts are garbage. (Or, to quote them more accurately, they’re shit.) You’re going to spend a long time revising that manuscript if you hope to make it worth reading. And if you’re sharing it with critique partners or beta readers, chances are you’ll be sharing it with several people who can all attest that the work is yours.

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