Tracking your word count output is one solid, measurable way to quantify what is often a very unquantifiable art form — writing. Especially creative writing. Especially if you are still trudging away in the writing trenches with little publishing record or monetary benefit or other means to track “success.”

I’ve written a lot about writing productivity, writing every day, and setting measurable goals. And in all that a common theme emerges about having word count goals, both short-term (daily) goals that build up to long-term (yearly) goals. And I’ve written so much about it because that was the exact method…

On Medium, I primarily write about writing, specifically fiction. I occasionally dabble in other topics, like libraries, tidiness strategies, and opinion pieces. I always try to write from a genuine place of ‘I want to share this, teach this, connect with this.’ I have a personal line in the sand over things I plan to never write and publish hear, ranging from ‘I just don’t care’ to ‘moral opposition.’

Celebrity gossip and social commentary hot takes

I just don’t care enough. Yeah, sometimes the drama that happens on Twitter or elsewhere sparks some important conversations in our culture. But I don’t want or need to keep on…

The Short Of It

Action tags are an alternative to traditional dialogue tags. They can be a great way to liven up your fiction and do some more showing rather than telling… as long as you use them correctly.

Dialogue tag versus action tags

The traditional dialogue tag is tacked onto the line of dialogue with a comma. It is one sentence together.

“Blah, blah, blah,” Brian said.

The action tag is a separate sentence from the line of dialogue, but that accompanies the line of dialogue either directly before or after. …

On the sliding scale of ‘you should finish every book you pick up’ and ‘don’t finish books you don’t like’… I’m solidly on the side of ‘don’t finish books you don’t like.’ With some caveats.

Of course, ‘like’ is a subjective term and broad in each person’s definition. But as a passionate reader and a librarian surrounded by tempting new titles every day… my to-read list is exponentially growing. There are so many books I want to read and not infinite lifetimes to read them. So, yeah, I got to like it. It may not be an easy read or…

In the Daniel Radcliffe-starring indie flick “Kill Your Darlings” in which he plays Beat poet Alan Ginsburg, there is a moment near the end of the film in which he is being scolded by his college professors about his vulgar and salacious story submission for his final project. Ginsburg/Radcliffe responds, “But you finished it.”

This struck my young, malleable writer brain like a bolt of lightning. Is the worst thing your writing can be is something readers don’t want to finish? Is the worst sin of writing being boring?

Boring is in the eye of the beholder

“Boring” is a subjective measure. One person’s boring is another person’s…

One of the great lies of creative writing is the idea that we should — or that most writers do — write a story from a to z — from beginning to end — neatly and cleanly. Conversely, one of the great advantages of word processors is that you don’t have to. You can skip back and forth in a story, in a scene, or in a sentence, easy-peasy.

Maybe this is something you are already doing naturally. Good on you. …

Your average public library is not an archive with special collections. They are not a museum. They do not have infinite storage space. And everyone and their mom who is spring cleaning want to donate their old books, magazines, and the like to their library. As a culture we just have a thing against throwing away books — and that is understandable and even admirable. But libraries are not the dumping grounds for old books.

Yes, some will gladly take your donations. Some will ask you to hold off or redirect you to another community program in need. While it…

I had a degree in creative writing, wrote weekly if not daily, and had a number of short stories published in literary magazines… and yet none of my coworkers knew I was a writer. Because I didn’t feel like a real-enough, bona fide writer yet. A writerly writer. An authorly author.

Yeah, I had a big dose of imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome runs rampant in the writing community. …