Do you know something that bothers me when I am reading a novel? Useless flashbacks. Recently I was reading a story where the main character had a flashback. While the memory was compelling and easy to follow, it didn’t serve any purpose in the scene. You might be thinking “well, it probably was important to something later on in the book.” I have since finished the book, and it did not, in fact, serve a purpose later in the book either. It really had no point in the book. There wasn’t an important tidbit of information from the flashback that…

Writing conferences. If you’re a writer (like most of you reading this probably are), then you’ve at least heard of them. You’ve maybe even attended one or two, or, if you’re a published author, maybe even presented at a conference before. Conferences are a big part of any field — especially pre-pandemic — but are they worth it? I’ve attended my fair share of conferences since I was in college, and I fall firmly on the side of loving them. If you’re a bit more on the fence, I totally get it. When you’re a pre-New-York-Times-bestselling author, there’s a lot…

I recently attended a writing conference where there were pitch appointments available for all attendees. This is one of the biggest perks of attending a writing conference in my opinion — the ability to pitch to, learn from, and simply talk to industry professionals who, let’s face it, know a lot more about how to get a book published than many aspiring writers do. To pitch at this conference, writers were asked to come prepared with their book’s title, genre, word count, and logline.

If you’re like me, you might be thinking, “what’s a logline?” Well, to put it simply…

Anecdote | Animal rescue

I’ve had three cats in my life so far. One, Mitsy, was a little tuxedo kitten who showed up in the under-construction suburb of Nashville my family lived in while I was growing up. She was an amazing cat who lived with our family, and then me, for sixteen years before passing away last year.

The second cat, Cinders, is the first cat I adopted on my own after moving out of my parents’ house. She comes from the streets of Pueblo, Colorado, where a friend of one of my mom’s coworkers works with the Humane Society to do TNR…

In the world of entrepreneurship, you might not be spending your time in daily work meetings and going to job interviews. Sure, there are always important meetings in any working professional’s life — entrepreneur or not — but they tend to look a little less traditional for entrepreneurs. My meetings and events for my small business, borrowed solace, an online literary journal, consist of attending conferences and hosting online workshops. This understandably looks very different from any of the job interviews or meetings I have had in my traditional brick-and-mortar jobs. …

For a long time, I wasn’t the best at handling stress. I don’t think you could say I was the worst at handling stress, but I didn’t handle it well. So, as you can imagine, when I found myself in a job that did anything but help me manage my stress, I went into a bit of a downward spiral.

But even those things in life that are very difficult to navigate can teach us lessons. …