JOANNA ELM, Author, Journalist, Attorney
The Pleasures and Perils Of A Writing Life
If your website is going to crash, the week of Thanksgiving is probably the best time for it to happen. No, I’m not kidding. It happened to me last week. And, I discovered there’s an upside when your website crashes during a major holiday week. Continue reading “Sorry, My Website Crashed Last Week”
Bestselling author Andrew Gross has had some lucky breaks with his writing. But, he also took a few risks at the height of his career as a “suburban” thriller writer.
Most notably, his biggest break came when James Patterson invited him to be his co-author. He wrote five thrillers with James Patterson before writing eight thrillers alone.
His biggest risk? Switching from writing those bestselling suburban (his description) thrillers, like 15 Seconds, where he was writing about “people like you and me” to writing historical thrillers like The One Man and his most recent release, The Fifth Column.” Continue reading “10 Lessons From A Bestselling Author: Three of Them Are Harsh”
I was dreading returning to a condo that’s been under renovation for the last five months. For one, my room/office was not renovated.
So, you guessed it: Every single moveable item from the other rooms was crammed into my tiny writing space.
My workspace is still cluttered after days of sorting, cleaning and repositioning stuff. I initially thought about posting a photo of the clutter, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not a good environment for writing at all!
Continue reading “4 Great Home Design Innovations For Writers (And Others)”
I’m always aware of that old saying about idle minds becoming the devil’s playthings. So naturally, once I sent my revised manuscript out of the house and on its way into my agent’s inbox, I looked around for something worthwhile to do. Continue reading “My Evening With Vogue Editor, Anna Wintour: A Review”
My husband, Joe, bought these gorgeous roses for me. He thought they would brighten my week as I plowed through another set of edits, revisions and changes.
What! you say. More edits? More revisions? Are you kidding me? Didn’t you just sign with a literary agent? Continue reading “When Your Agent Says: Love Your Novel, Now Change It”