Write Fire with Fire

I like to give names to things, especially if they're intimidating or difficult to work with. It makes it easier for me to approach the scary task or object, or reel in my upsetments and take a few deep breaths. This month, one of those scary things I decided to address was the ever-looming threat of college graduation. (I don the cap and gown exactly one month out from today.) I determined that I needed to seek out new kinds of classrooms to continue my education in the Editing & Publishing world, and thus, Hannah the Baby Beta Reader was born. Beta reading itself doesn't seem all that intimidating, but the larger concept of actively taking personal risks in trying to break into the notoriously-competitive publishing world certainly does. Several things are working against me and my dreams of happily swimming through hoards of books for the rest of my life: 1. I'm a highly sensitive person, and don't take criticism well. Trying to write a book, that will require at...

We've all been there at some point as writers: staring in horror at the blinding vastness of a pearly white page, swearing we could hear the ticking taunts of the second hand with every flash of the cursor. The beginning of a story that hadn't yet been written. The adventures that, as of that moment, were mere echoes in your mind and incoherent notes on your phone, your desk, your hand. Do I actually have what it takes to make this story real? To put it together somehow, in some understandable way, and then share it with the world? The truth about human existence is that we have the innate ability to do incredible things with seemingly insufficient materials. This has been exemplified again, and again, and again. I'm sure you can think of at least one person in your life whose tenacity and resilience you admire above all else; it's just hard to see that in ourselves. That's where I was at last October, sitting in front of my computer, staring at another blank page....