✨Writing Rebels: Our Hosts Talk About Breaking the Rules…and What it Takes to Get Away With It✨

Plus, Rebekah Faubion, Sydney Leigh, Chelsey Pippin Mizzi, and Teresa Wong are here to help you survive rejection and unlock your creativity with fresh new tools!

Happy Tuesday, writing friends!

In need of some inspiration, advice or maybe a kick in the writerly pants? Look no further than this week’s newsletter exclusively for our paid members—we’ve got a jam-packed issue for you today, covering everything from dealing with rejection and new approaches to drafting, to an in-depth exploration of “the rules” for opening pages and knowing when you’re ready to break them. Intrigued? You should be!

First up is a Q&A with Rebekah Faubion, author of The Lovers, a Nora Ephron-style, sapphic rom-com (out now!) followed by an essay from Insta-goner author Sydney Leigh. Anyone considering packing in this whole writing thing after one rejection too many might reconsider after hearing about Rebekah’s journey to publication, and should definitely make use of Sydney’s five ways to stay on track and not give up. 🙌🏼👏🏽😊

Want more tools to help inspire your creativity? Then check out today’s video from Chelsey Pippin Mizzi. The author of two books on tarot, including Tarot for Creativity: A Guide for Igniting Your Creative Practice (out today!), Chelsey shares how you can use tarot to explore themes, story, characters and more (Alexander Chee and Sylvia Plath have apparently both used tarot this way, so we’re listening). 🎴✍🏾

We’ve also got a video from graphic novelist Teresa Wong (whose graphic memoir All Our Ordinary Stories is out today), taking us through her drafting process. We’re super-excited about this one because it’s an opportunity to showcase this genre for any aspiring cartoonists out there, and because it’s also packed with insights for anyone working on memoir, as well as some potential lightbulb moments for fiction writers.🖼️💡🤩

If you regularly listen to 📕Books with Hooks🪝on the podcast, you’ve likely heard Bianca, Carly, and CeCe talk a lot about the need to begin your novel with the character desperately wanting something, having a goal, and having high stakes tied to it. Today, our three hosts share a video in which they take a closer look at this advice and discuss what you can learn from authors who’ve thrown the rules out the window and still managed to write books that succeeded. 🎥🪟

Speaking of Books with Hooks, we’ve got our latest written critiques from this week’s podcast! And don’t forget to check out our latest course offerings!

Happy reading!

❤️ The Shit No One Tells You About Writing Team