Writer's Digest

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1 Histories of Yore “Breaking In” (Page 20) author J. Kasper Kramer writes about how digging into the histories of other countries can help us to understand our own present. 2 Some More Towles Amor Towles talks about his book club, current works-in-progress, and promoting his work in an extended cut of The WD Interview (Page 42.) 3 The Whole Truth Karen Russell, Esmé Weijun Wang, and Jericho Brown gave more insight on truth in writing than we could include in “Truth Serum” (Page 22). Read more of what they had to say when interviewed by WD contributor Jera Brown. To find all of the above online companions to this issue in one handy spot, visit WritersDigest.com/dec-19. BLOG ILLUSTRATION © FOTOLIA.COM: BLOSSOMSTAR; PHOTO 1 © GETTY IMAGES: CHALERMPHON KUMCHAI / EYEEM; PHOTO 2 © DMITRI KASTERINE; PHOTO…

plus: don’t miss these writing tips from writersdigest.com!

USING RECIPES IN YOUR NON-COOKBOOK MANUSCRIPT Want to make your story more savory? On the Market author Audrey Wick suggests including the recipes your characters devour. bit.ly/RecipesInYourManuscript 14 SHIRLEY JACKSON QUOTES ABOUT WRITERS AND WRITING WD senior editor Robert Lee Brewer shares his favorite quotes about writing from the author of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, “The Lottery,” and The Haunting of Hill House. bit.ly/ShirleyJacksonQuotes WRITING ABOUT YOUR LIFE WITHOUT RUINING YOUR RELATIONSHIPS “Write what you know” is common writing advice, as authors often mine what they know about their friends and family for stories. Debut novelist Mark Guerin writes about entering this delicate territory. bit.ly/WritingAboutYourLife…

of 800-pound pink elephants and telling the truth

Hello, dear readers. Welcome to our November/December issue, The Truth Issue. And boy howdy, am I ever ready to tell some truth! Those of you who follow us, in these pages, on the internet, and all points in between, have probably been waiting months for me to explain the things you’ve been seeing and hearing in the press, on Twitter, from those whisper networks … and now, at long last I can. We have had a challenging year here at Writer’s Digest. In March of this year, our former parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, setting in motion months of uncertainty for us. Would Writer’s Digest see its 100th anniversary? Would we be able to keep doing the work we love so dearly? Then, in June, Writer’s Digest was purchased by…

writer's digest

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Ericka McIntyre SENIOR EDITORS Jeanne Veillette Bowerman, Robert Lee Brewer, Amy Jones MANAGING EDITOR Cassandra Lipp ART DIRECTOR Wendy Dunning ILLUSTRATOR Katie Chandler EDITORS-AT-LARGE Tyler Moss Jessica Strawser CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Jane K. Cleland, David Corbett, Bob Eckstein, Jane Friedman, Steven James, Barbara Poelle, Elizabeth Sims, Jeff Somers, Kara Gebhart Uhl, Don Vaughan MARKETING DESIGNER Samantha Weyer COMPETITIONS MANAGER Tara Johnson EVENT DIRECTOR Taylor Sferra GROUP PUBLISHER Ray Chelstowski GENERAL MANAGER Peter Miller PRESIDENT & CEO Andrew W. Clurman SENIOR VP, CFO, COO & TREASURER Michael Henry VP OF AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Tom Masterson VP, PRODUCTION & MANUFACTURING Barbara Van Sickle VP, PEOPLE & PLACES JoAnn Thomas VP, DIGITAL PRODUCTS & PLATFORMS Katie Herrell VP, IT Nelson Saenz AIM BOARD CHAIR Efrem Zimbalist III ADVERTISING SALES REPRESENTATIVE Jill Ruesch (800)726-9966, ext. 13223; fax: (715)445-4087; JRuesch@aimmedia.com ADVERTISING SALES COORDINATOR Julie Dillon (800)726-9966, ext. 13311; fax: (715)445-4087; JDillon@aimmedia.com…

contributors

KILBY BLADES is a 40-time-award-winning author of romance and women’s fiction. Her debut novel Snapdragon was a HOLT Medallion finalist, a Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize semifinalist, and an Independent Publisher Book Awards medalist. Blades helps authors overcome marketing barriers by exposing harmful myths and teaching them how to think like pros. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and managed more than $40 million in ad spend in VP and C-level digital marketing roles. She is also the author The Book Marketing Audit, Marketing Steamy Romance, and The Book Reviews Booster. She writes a column on social media for the Romance Writers of America Romance Writers Report and runs an author advice portal on SixFigureAuthor.com BOB ECKSTEIN is an award-winning writer, New Yorker cartoonist, and snowman expert (The Illustrated…

expectation versus reality: 10 truths you should know about nanowrimo

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the largest writing event in the world: National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo). If you don’t know about NaNoWriMo, more than 300,000 writers sign up each November for a simple but audacious challenge: write 50,000 words of a novel in a month. That translates into a very do-able 1,667 words per day. The idea is to banish your internal editor, plunge into your imagination, and write your story today—not during that novel-killing period of time known as … “someday.” One’s creativity shouldn’t be a hall pass from the stiff and forbidding demands of your life. NaNoWriMo’s gift is to make creativity a priority for a month—and we hope, longer. But NaNoWriMo is so much more than a 50,000-word challenge. In honor of the approximately three million writers…