Written by couns22cMay 29, 2023May 29, 2023

Writer’s Block, Laziness, and Perseverance in Writing: How to Gentle Parent Yourself into Writing Again

Lately I feel as though I have come to a catastrophic full stop in my fantasy writing. Like, I’m here doing this (the blog), but what of aCATemy, which I was “supposed to” write in April? What of Magic Princess Academy, which I can’t seem to figure out how to revise? What of that new shiny cozy fantasy I want to write but haven’t written more than a chapter of, with a monster hunter who gives up hunting to protect two cerberi puppies? I think…

Written by couns22cFebruary 14, 2023April 13, 2023

The Invisible Costs of Social Media: How it Harms Writers

In my more recent blog posts, I mentioned feeling burned out and wanting to defragment my brain. This is probably relatable to most people at this point, what with an ongoing global pandemic and all. But because it’s “new year new me” season, I’ve been trying to think of ways to get back into writing while also cutting down on distractions…

Written by couns22cFebruary 20, 2022February 20, 2022

How to Find an Agent: Utilizing Meta Tags and Twitter Advanced Search to Kick Querying’s Butt

In November of 2020, I queried twenty-two agents, and was so emotionally smashed by the process that I didn’t query again until November of 2021. For me, querying was disorienting, disheartening, and often felt like yelling into the void of a stranger’s inbox…

Written by couns22cFebruary 7, 2022February 15, 2022

How to figure out what you love so that you can write what you love

In a perfect world, writing what you love would be easy. You’d dig deep into your heartsong and out on the page would come, you know, your heartsong—the most passionate, authentic literary expression you could muster. But we don’t live in that perfect world, and when…

Written by couns22cJanuary 20, 2022January 20, 2022

Showing vs. telling: When is it appropriate to tell rather than show?

In writing, “show, don’t tell” is a frequently touted maxim, probably because the CIA pushed it into prestigious writing communities like the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and the Paris Review, and they, in turn, spread it as an unbreakable literary law. But unless you only want…

Written by couns22cNovember 30, 2021

Writing as a form of dialogue with mythological traditions: What is white culture anyway?

This month, I read Roshani Chokshi’s Aru Shah and the End of Time, a middle grade novel about an Indian preteen who has to come into her power as a “soul-daughter” of a Hindu god of the heavens in order to stop an ancient, world-destroying evil that she, herself, accidentally summoned. The book is good. The book is good in a way that makes me screw up my eyes and puff out my cheeks and become a red-faced jealousy goblin. And so…

Written by couns22cAugust 26, 2021August 26, 2021

Lonesome road: How to establish support networks when you’re new to writing

Writing is, in particular, a difficult art form. Unlike physical arts such as drawing, painting, or crochet, you cannot just flash your product (draft or finished) in front of just any bystander’s face and hope for external validation. I know this from experience…

Written by couns22cJune 7, 2021June 7, 2021

Compelling openings一now with examples!

So I’m currently reading River Quest. It’s a chapter book from the Dinotopia universe and WOW does it jump on the plot horse…

Written by couns22cJanuary 9, 2021February 12, 2022

Description is a thing one should know how to do…

Hello gentle readers! Happy 2021! Thank goodness 2020 is over. Maybe now we can get back to being moved by minor ecological destruction like all of Australia burning down. Ha. Ha. 😦 I was having a good think about what I should write my next newsletter about. Boyfriend suggested the connection of how plot drives […]

Written by couns22cDecember 13, 2020June 7, 2021

What I wish I’d known about querying agents: and what I wish agents knew about querying

Hello gentle reader. It is I—Chelsea Counsell. Long time no talk. I, like you, have been trying to survive during corona, which generally means dragging myself out of bed like a rotting mollusk and continuing to labor under the yoke of capitalism even though I feel… like a rotting mollusk. In November, I began actually […]