Last year, we wrote a popular blog post on gifts for writers (and readers). Our own holiday gifts to one another were literary in theme – a Mad Hatter tea pot for Michelle, Romeo and Juliet  fingerless gloves for Judith. Anything that helps inspiration flow,…

Well, folks, it’s almost Thanksgiving, quite possibly my favorite holiday. First and foremost I’m always grateful to my family for being the continual force for good that they are, and this year, I must especially thank my brother and sister-in-law for offering up their home…

Just how does an aspiring novelist find his way to becoming the head of a brand-new, paradigm-shifting division of a major publishing house?  For Brendan Deneen, it’s a circuitous route that lead to becoming the head of Macmillan Entertainment, the book-to-film division of Macmillan Publishing.  His untraditional approach to getting things…

by Jeff Campbell, TWC Instructor One good hook? That’s hard enough to come up with. Fifty good hooks, one after another, for 300 pages? That’s the daunting challenge I faced when writing my forthcoming book Daisy to the Rescue (Zest Books). It’s a collection of…

Thanks to Christina Kapp, who facilitates TWC’s Poets Circle and teaches our Wednesday Young Storymakers class, for sharing her retreat journal with us! Friday It was definitely not a good time to disappear for the weekend. School had just started for my kids and I…

by Paul Witcover, TWC Sci-Fi/Fantasy Instructor Are you a speculative fiction writer? Speculative fiction is distinguished by a sense of wonder. Entire books of critical theory have been written about the term “sense of wonder,” but what it means in practice is a willingness to…

Inspired by TWC’s upcoming writing retreat, Michelle offers a whimsical fairy tale… Once upon a time, there was a timid young woman with a yen for writing and a monster desk-drawer dragon that fed on her work and kept her voice hidden from the world……

by Alex, age 14, Summer Intensive Writer This essay was written following the Summer Creative Writing Intensive’s visit to the Deserted Village in Watchung Reservation on July 23. Through the bus window I can smell the unmistakable, impenetrable scent of soil. As we climb out,…

by Cindy Sharra, TWC Intern As New Jersey’s prolonged winter loosened its grasp, the long-awaited summer took its place. Students from around the area parted from their schools and supplies – except from their pencils, that is. But they wouldn’t be used for writing research…

O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain! My tables—meet it is I set it down That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain— Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 106–108 Hamlet had it right. When we write the villains in our stories, we want to…

This Sunday’s Speaker Series event, “Publishing Insiders” was a huge hit, with three articulate young professionals telling it like it really is in a rapidly changing and still completely vital industry. Alex Cameron, Assistant to the Associate Publisher at Tor Books (part of Macmillan), Anna…

A lot of my students are coming to an interesting moment in their writing. They’re nearing the end of their drafts – long, hard-earned manuscripts that they’ve been crafting for months – sometimes years. But they know they’re not finished. In fact, their first sentence…