The Renegade Writer Blog

Whenever I get together with my one of my local writing buddies (and friend!), our meeting generates a bazillion ideas for this blog. We should meet up more often, D!
We were chatting about an online board we both belong to and wondering what possesses people to share so much with strangers. I’m not talking about […]

I’m not a travel writer by any stretch of the imagination, although I have written travel articles. However, I do regularly fantasize about all-expenses-paid trips to places like Dubai and Estonia … hey, I’m just not a Paris kind of girl. This post by travel writer Lara Dunston screwed my head on straight. No way […]

Hilarious! Dennis Cass should be in standup (maybe he is?) … his timing is perfect and he’s 50x funnier than Jerry Seinfeld. My favorite line: “You know what’s funny about the Oprah question … I would have just called you and said ‘I’m going on Oprah.’ I wouldn’t have let you come to me.” [db]
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Writer (and former editor) Liz Strauss guest-blogged this week on the Freelance Writing Jobs blog about the three qualities that made freelancers stand out when she was sitting on the other side of the desk. Strauss admits that these traits were uncommon. Sad, isn’t it, because they’re such basic business 101 qualities. Unfortunately, I have […]

Today both Gawker and GalleyCat have links to a YouTube video of disgraced memoir writer Margaret Seltzer talking about her childhood spent running with (cough) LA’s most brutal gangs. Obviously this was taped before her real-life sister blew the whistle on her. It’s fascinating to watch: the accent, the stories, the emotion — the chutzpah! […]

My blog post from last June about the hoopla surrounding the self-help movie/book and ensuing media phenomenon, The Secret, generated some commentary here. While I do believe in the Law of Attraction, I was critical of the film I’d seen, which actually dared to suggest that people became seriously ill or encountered misfortune because they […]

I was talking to a freelancer friend of mine on the phone the other day and she was telling me how many other writers have come to her asking, “Can you give me your editor’s name?” or “What’s your editor’s e-mail address?” Frankly, I was surprised by the number of times this happened to her. […]

Thanks to a post in today’s GalleyGat, I spent the last hour reading the details of an angry romance author’s vendetta against the writer of a (gasp!) 3-star amazon.com review. I read the review — since taken down by amazon.com presumably at the angry author’s request — and it’s fairly pleasant, nothing that would get […]

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read this note from Rachel Mosteller, who took my 8-week e-course on breaking into magazines one year ago:
At the very end of 2006, I decided to take one of your courses with hopes of starting a freelance career. In January 2007, I bought Query Letters That Rocked. I […]

Here’s Elaine Appleton Grant again with a guest post. One of my New Year’s Resolutions isn’t just to increase my sales, but to improve my writing and write more complex and literary features. I needed a little inspiration, so I did two things: I went back and reread some of my favorite articles, and I […]