What to Do When Someone Writes ‘Your’ Book

A few years ago, I was struggling to write a story. I had an incoherent outline and a few sample chapters and just couldn’t pull it together. Desperate, I texted my dear friend Jan O’Hara, who agreed to take a look. We batted ideas around for a bit, and I went back to work feeling much better.
Some months later, I mentioned the story—now much further along—to Jan, who sent me a panicked note back saying that she was also now working on a story and it had an unmistakable resemblance to mine. Scrupulously ethical, she offered to abandon hers if I thought it was too similar and sent a summary for me to read.
https://writerunboxed.com/2026/05/22/what-to-do-when-someone-writes-your-book/

#REALWORLD #BigMagic #dopplegangerbook #ElizabethGilbert #JanOHara

Flog a Pro: Would You Turn the First Page of this Bestseller?

Email readers, heads up! For the full effect, pause after the excerpt and decide: Would you turn the page? Vote and then scroll for the reveal!
Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page . In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), there are 16 or 17 lines on the first page.
Here’s the question:
Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter? With 50 chapters in a book that costs $15, each chapter would be “worth” 30 cents.
https://writerunboxed.com/2026/05/21/flog-a-pro-would-you-turn-the-first-page-of-this-bestseller-50/

#REALWORLD

The Weird Editing Habit I Can’t Write Without

I’ve always had a strange editing habit: I read almost everything I write out loud. 
Emails. Ads. Chapters in my novel. Billboards and banner ads no one will ever actually hear spoken. I read them all out loud. I do this because the rhythm of my writing matters to me—and because I can hear when something isn’t working faster than I can see it. 
The first time someone pointed out this strange habit, I was sitting in my cubicle at the advertising agency where I worked. I was deep into hour two of trying to get a paragraph of body copy exactly right. Every time I made a change—even something as small as changing a comma into an em-dash (my favorite!)—I would read the paragraph out loud again to hear the difference in the rhythm.
https://writerunboxed.com/2026/05/20/the-weird-editing-habit-i-cant-write-without/

#CRAFT #Editing #Process #REALWORLD

A Plot Twist with a Twist

Serendipity once again gave me my topic for this month.  For my birthday this year, Ruth managed to find a piece of sheet music I’d been hunting for a while – an organ arrangement of Handel’s “The Entrance of the Queen of Sheba.”  The piece is not terribly hard and eleven different kinds of fun to play.
It also reminded me of a delightful plot twist I read some years ago in Jane Langton’s Divine Inspiration (1993).  Divine Inspiration is a good mystery and I’d recommend it, even though the denouement involves some technology that eighteen-year-olds would probably have to Google.  But the mystery really endears itself to organists because it’s about one of our own.  (If you would like to read it, be warned:  spoilers ahead.)…
https://writerunboxed.com/2026/05/19/a-plot-twist-with-a-twist/

#CRAFT #Editing #REALWORLD #plottwists #Surprise

Where Are You, Muse?

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https://writerunboxed.com/2026/05/18/where-are-you-muse/

#Health #Inspirations #perseverance #REALWORLD #Writinglife

4 Guides to a Sustainable Writing Life

In the publishing industry, “what will sell” is always a moving target. To adapt is to survive, for both creators and those who sell their works. Add today’s rapid socio-political shifts and it’s hard for a business to create a strategic plan that will still work next week let alone in the year(s) it will take to write and publish a novel.
https://writerunboxed.com/2026/05/14/4-guides-to-a-sustainable-writing-life/

#Inspirations #REALWORLD #Writinglife #DonMiguelRuiz #emotionalmanagement

The Story of You: How Much of Myself Should I Put In a Book?

Writers leave distinct fingerprints in everything they write, little pieces of themselves scattered in their work. It’s just a casualty of our job.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, my current research obsession, left clues to her lovers and relationships that readers can trace through her poetry. Sylvia Plath branded her poetry with her rage and discontent and used her personal experience in a psychiatric hospital in her novel The Bell Jar. Emily Brontë left a lasting impression in her poems and novel of a woman who didn’t fit inside a box, who was underestimated and dismissed even though she was highly intelligent, while Charlotte wrote about plain women in humble circumstances who were also independently minded—portraits of herself.
https://writerunboxed.com/2026/05/13/the-story-of-you-how-much-of-myself-should-i-put-in-a-book/

#REALWORLD

Social Media is Redefining the Author’s Job

BookCon is a beloved event where the invisible boundary between authors and readers finally falls away, and everyone gets to share their mutual enthusiasm for impactful storytelling. I’ve never had the privilege of attending, but that’s where social media comes in handy. Each year BookCon took place, I found myself wistfully scrolling through posts shared by readers, authors, and publishers alike, dreaming of the day I’d finally be part of the crowd rather than a remote spectator.
https://writerunboxed.com/2026/05/12/social-media-is-redefining-the-authors-job/

#REALWORLD #Writinglife

Readings for Writers: In Extremis: W.B. Yeats

As an Irishman, Yeats understood revolution as a turn toward independence, the freedom to determine one’s own fate. He also knew the cost, measured in lives lost, of the struggle to throw off British colonial rule. He was born in Dublin in 1865, the same year the Fenian Land Reform Movement began. He was 40 when the Sinn Féin political party was founded. He was 51 at the Easter Rebellion of 1916. He lived through the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), the brief truce that followed, the reignition of civil war, and the consolidation of the Irish Free State (1925-1939).
https://writerunboxed.com/2026/05/11/readings-for-writers-in-extremis-w-b-yeats/

#Inspirations #REALWORLD #ElizabethHuergo #inspiration #writinglife