A reader wrote: "I'm sure you hear this often--I'm stuck! I am great at first drafts, in fact I'm submerged in them. They never get anywhere. I found your site online and performed the "Ophra" asks exercise and it helped.

My ideal reader is a confused teenage girl; she feels like an outcast because her best friend just moved to Montana and nobody understands her at school or at home.My ideal reader is crazy about fixing old cars. He's got

When I was in the deepest struggle with my novel, Qualities of Light, I took a one-day workshop from author Alison McGhee. Alison has won awards for her fiction and my favorite of her novels is called Shadow Baby. I

A writer in my Loft Literary Center book-writing class was working on her memoir. She asked a really good question during the weekend workshop. "How do I keep enough personal fire or passion in my story, since it's about me?

Striving to get more voice, more emotion in your writing? One of my favorite nonfiction writers, Rick Bass, shares an important clue on how to do this. It goes back to the old saying, God is in the details."All of