In this issue, discover how keeping your diaries can lead to a memoir; plus, an interview with Gretchen Powell Fox, writing "what if" stories, and more! |
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One winter night, my neighbor’s French fries caught on fire, burning our condos nearly to the ground. The next day, I ventured home to assess the damage. I poked my head in my second-floor office, afraid of what I’d find. Amazingly, my 300 diaries still lined the floor-to-ceiling shelves. I vowed to read each before another catastrophe did destroy them. And so, I launched a new pastime: Every night after work, I devoured another volume.
(How to Manage a Family Archive.)
As I read the diaries, spanning from 1986, when I’d first moved to LA at the age of 33, to the present, January 2003, I came to an unsettling conclusion: As a diarist, I was not just an archivist, I was also a decoder, and I’d fallen short on the second half of the job description. Each journal entry felt like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Each irregular shape defined a fragment of my life. But the thousands of pieces needed to be fit together. Only then could I see my life trajectory and a much-needed resolution to my arc of change.
Read more... |
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| 2026 April Poem-A-Day Challenge: Day 13 |
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Write a poem a day with poets from around the world for the 2026 April PAD Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a problem poem. Read more... |
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Gretchen Powell Fox: This Will Always Be the Book of My Heart |
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"My advice to other writers would be this: Write the book. Tell your story. And if you ever get hung up on wondering if it’s too late or the wrong time or you missed your chance, believe me when I tell you that you did not. Your readers are out there. They want to hear from you, I promise." Read more... |
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Writing "What If" Stories |
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A missed train. An unreturned phone call. A mistakenly grabbed Starbucks coffee cup. The idea of a single moment changing everything is entwined in storytelling. In fact, it’s a major story beat in the craft of writing: the inciting incident. (Immutable Moments: The Load-Bearing Beats of a Story.)
Yet there’s a specific genre that takes this further by incorporating it not as a story beat but as the story’s foundation: the “what if?” story. In a what-if narrative, the premise itself is built on a choice or moment that sends a character’s life spinning in an entirely different direction. Often to a different world.
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| Achieve Perfect Pacing
This issue is dedicated to pacing in any and every interpretation of the word as it relates to both writing and publishing. That means, how to keep the pace going as you draft a novel or work on revising it, and how to build in pauses that force readers to stop and think about what they’ve read. It also means advice for indie authors on how to pace the release of their books, understanding traditional publishing timelines, and much more.
Click here to learn more >> |
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The Setting as a Character |
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Author Willa Goodfellow shares tips for crafting the setting as a character in stories (of fiction or nonfiction), including examples.
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| From Your Writer's Digest Editor: Robert Lee Brewer
Robert Lee Brewer is a senior editor for Writer’s Digest and former editor of the Writer's Market book series. He is also the author of Smash Poetry Journal and Solving the World's Problems. He found a collection of poems by Miltos Sachtouris over the weekend and loves them. |
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