Length! Oh dear god. (For more on god, see my novella, The Funeral.)  I used to think that in order to be a real writer, you need to write full length novels. And that, my friends, is an amateur talking.  In my experience, you can’t force your story to be any longer or shorter than it needs to be. In order for it to be the best it can be,

I had to learn the hard way the purpose of the second draft.  My first novel, a magically realistic family chronicle that I never published, was truly awful. In my mind, the entire story was about one thing that the reader either got or didn’t get. It was like an intelligence test.  What a stupid idea to base your book on.  My second full-length, Shedding, I did publish, but I’m

I write fairly decent poetry. It’s better than my prose anyway. Therefore I have the audacity to set out some poetry rules. Here goes. Poetry does NOT have to rhyme. Even if you write lyrical poetry. I’d go as far as to say rhymes can make your poem sound phony. (Been there.) There are NO limits to the length of a poem. It can be three lines or three hundred

Some people think you shouldn’t choose a genre just because it’s popular and has a large audience. First, I’d like to say that haters gonna hate – people don’t want others to make more money than themselves and that’s why they don’t recommend choosing a lucrative genre. Second, there’s some truth what they’re saying. You see, if you choose your genre based on what’s popular, you might neglect a genre

About ten years ago I read in the blog of one aspiring writer that if you want to be a writer, you should write every day. I hated her immediately. She seemed to think she knew how to be a writer, and that she was an authority at said venture – that she could say anything about being a writer and because she said it, it would be the ultimate

Unpopular opinion: every writer needs a workspace. I don’t mean you need an office, or that you need to to work in the same space every day, or that you are unable to work sitting in your bed. What I mean is that every writer needs to move from their living space to a physically different space to work consistently. Your workspace is the place where you’re allowed to work

Hi, my name is R. K. Warbird. It’s a kick-ass name, even if I say so myself. Giving yourself a kick-ass pen name is one of the most important pieces of advice I’d give to anyone who wants to write. Because the name is important. It’s in the cover of your every book. Use your own name if you can – it greatly increases the odds of your old high