By guest blogger Marina Nazarov My English learning journey began about 11 years ago when I immigrated to USA. The only English words I knew that time were: Hello, Thank You, and Please. Those are the staples of etiquette somewhat, but the reality was brutal: I wasn’t able to communicate even on a basic level….
Category Archives: confidence/self-belief
You Just Have to Talk to the Right Person!
By Milli Thornton I DON’T USE this blog for giving advice on how to get published. There’s tons of good advice out there and Fear of Writing is here to fill an entirely different niche. I’m also a self-published writer, so I don’t keep up with the trends. But something happened to me today that…
ZUMBA® and Writing: How They Compare
By Milli Thornton THIS WEEK I decided to try a ZUMBA Fitness® dance class at our local fitness and wellness center. From the official website: Zumba Fitness® is the only Latin-inspired dance-fitness program that blends red-hot international music, created by Grammy Award-winning producers, and contagious steps to form a “fitness-party” that is downright addictive. Being…
The Ways We Fraud Ourselves (Especially Writers?!)
By guest blogger Sandra Williams After reading Do You Suffer from Impostor Syndrome? on my friend Julia Munroe Martin’s writing blog, wordsxo, I decided to pull this post out of the archives from 2008. Because whenever we’re feeling this way, we’re apt to believe that we’re the only one. — Milli I’VE FOUND THAT whatever…
Life and writing are messy – but you’ve gotta love the challenge!
By guest blogger Estrella Azul This guest post was one of the toughest to submit so far. Sure there have been poetry and mainly flash fiction submissions sent in to various e-zines and some rejection emails, but that was fiction. I was okay enough with the rejections. What you’ll read below, though, are some of…
How a Horse Trainer Trained Me
By guest blogger Lisa Kilian When I got out of school, I knew I was going to be a writer. I read all the books on craft and salivated over contemporary fiction novels with pictures of beautiful women authors on the back. I followed all the most important industry blogs; Nathan Bransford, Query Shark, Miss…
The Making of Kid Stuph
By guest blogger Kenneth Hopkins I sat there for what seemed like hours, my finger poised precariously over the Enter key, reading the last few lines of my post again and again. I was confident in what I wrote but still I hesitated . . . why? This was my continuing saga in my decision…
Inspiring A Writer Manqué from Brockton
(Manqué: short of or frustrated in the fulfillment of one’s aspirations or talents—used postpositively; i.e., a poet manqué) Guest post by JW Rogers Dinner was winding down and I’d just gotten into an unlikely conversation. A man I didn’t know had been sitting across from me all night and I’d written him off because of…
Writing and Trust
By Milli Thornton Do you remember the first time you connected with the joys of writing? For me, it was age 13 and a story assignment from our English teacher. I was burrowed into a warm and glorious cocoon, inhabiting a special, exciting world only I had the power to create. After I emerged, I…
One Failure Made All the Difference
By guest blogger Bob Wilson I graduated some years back from the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). While I was there, UNI implemented a writing competency exam. All students had to pass the test in order to graduate. I thought – no problem, as I’ve always done well in school and been good at taking…
