As a freelance editor, one of the main problems my writers face is the ideal of perfection. I struggle with this myself as a writer. If my project isn’t complete, it feels utterly imperfect, and that creates a mental block. I can’t write.
​
Or else, I look at the work of other writers and think: They wrote this perfect thing. I’ll never be good enough to compete with them.

Putting aside the idea that writing is a competition (News Flash: It’s not.), I think this is a perfectly natural desire — the desire to be perfect. After all, as humans, we are always striving toward something in our lives. Writers are a special type of human in that we are striving towards creating — and we have high levels of perfectionism because we care about our work!

Read the full article on Medium . . .

Thousands of business owners have dived into publishing as a way to reach more customers and engage their clientele. Whether it’s Standard Baking (my favorite little bakery in Portland, Maine), who put out a book of their best recipes, or Ryder Carroll, the super-famous creator of the Bullet Journal, or Marie Kondo, organizer extraordinaire. Writing about what you do is a fantastic way to grow your business.
Read the full article at Write Weird . . .

Right now, I think we’re all struggling to get by as writers. When I poll my writer friends on their current writing life, everyone says that it’s a struggle to get words on paper. So keeping a journal ABOUT your writing might feel counter-intuitive. How can I write about my writing when I’m not getting much writing done?

Read the full article at Write Weird . . .

As a freelance editor, many of my clients are respected business leaders and community civic leaders. I’ve seen how they’ve taught themselves to succinctly summarize an idea — boiling it down to its essence so that it’s easy to understand. The most successful leaders use writing as one of many tools to succeed and focus their thoughts.
Business owners and leaders already spend a lot of time writing. From emails to orders to proposals — professional writing skills are essential. You may notice that the most successful leaders are often articulate, quick-witted, and shrewd communicators.
Read the full article here . . .

Thank you for age sixteen when I, bashed apart by loneliness,
curled up in your dark hair and white skin and the spaces
between your crooked teeth...

Read the poem at The Junction . . .

Poets who have been writing for several years end up with lots of unfinished drafts and notes. As a freelance editor, I often work with clients who have tons of old drafts and no clue how to process them. For myself, I often write 100+ poems in a year, resulting in a massive amount of poem clutter.

After all, you don’t want to abandon those poems that are older, because they feel like your babies. But it is necessary to sort through them, to choose poems for publication or to just decide how to categorize them. As Paul Valery said, “No poem is ever ended, every poem is merely abandoned.” Poems that don’t work now might work later. Poems that aren’t published in a journal or magazine might make it into the later draft of a book.

As I was thinking about this process, I wished there was a good method for sorting through old drafts. Then I remembered one of my favorite Netflix shows and a woman named Marie Kondo.

Read the full article here . . .

“The writing of poetry is not a craft. We are making birds, not birdcages” –p.47, Dean Young, The Art of Recklessness

Revision is one of my least favorite things to do as a writer of fiction, but when it comes to poetry, I absolutely love it. As an editor, I work with many poets who are struggling to understand what a poem is and how they can improve their poetry. They see other poets succeeding (getting poetry acceptances, writing full-length collections, etc.) and want to know how to be a better writer of poetry.
In her MasterClass, Margaret Atwood says, “Revision means re-vision — you’re seeing it anew, and quite frequently when you’re doing that, you see possibilities that you didn’t see before and that light up parts of the book in a way that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t done that.”


Read the full article here . . .

This might seem like a hot take, but no one wants to read your opinion about a book. No one cares. We don't read books so we can learn what critics like or dislike about them. We read books to escape our lives, to be enriched, to enlarge our imagination. 

Book reviews are vital to the book publishing world. They help readers determine whether they will want to read a book. They're a major factor in book sales. If you want to be a successful book reviewer, you have to look beyond just your own complaints.

Read the full article here . . . 

Have you ever thought about memory? It's such an important tool in writing poetry, and yet we remember things without even realizing it. Every moment of every day, we're remembering our grocery lists, our tasks, but also the memories of emotion and love and wonder and fear. Memory gets us through our day.

Mary Oliver said the goal of revising is to write "memorably." So what makes a reader remember a poem? As children, we were taught to memorize poetry. But most readers usually only memorize poems they love as adults. 
 
Read the whole article here . . .

I have a new poem up at Barely South Review. This poem also happens to be part of my new book and debut full-length book of poetry forthcoming from CLASH Books in September of 2021. Stay tuned for more boney weirdness, y'all. 

Read the poem here . . .

I have a new poem up today at Mithila Review! "We're Refugees Who Found Love Searching for Atlantis" is a pantoum poem that first appeared in Italian in my chapbook Numinose Lapidi from Kipple Press. I am very honored that Mithila Review agreed to publish the English and Italian version, translated by the late Marco Raimondo. 

Marco was an Italian translator of poetry who died due to complications surrounding his disability. Before he died, we discussed my sending out poems from the book so that they could be read together, and it was a dream of his to be published in magazines. I am honored to fulfill that dream today. 

Also, you can listen to me read the English version aloud in this publication :) 

Read it here . . . 

​Dates: March 1-28
Format: Group Workshop (more info)

From Plath to Sexton to Lorde to Walker, women are the backbone of experimental poetics. In this class, we’ll read the work of popular feminist poets and write our own poems inspired by their work. Audre Lorde said, “The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.” By celebrating the work of the women who came before us, this workshop will explore how to dismantle the patriarchal conventions of poetry by diving into the canon of women poets.

Register at the early-bird price of $275 (regular price: $295) before February 15.

These days, it might seem superfluous to submit poetry to journals and magazines when you can make a living as an Instapoet instead. But in the world of poetry, having many publications under your belt can be a way to build towards publishing a chapbook or full-length book of poems.
What follows is a step-by-step guide for poets on submitting your work. This is part of a series of articles for new writers who’ve never sent their work out before. While everyone’s process is different, I hope these tips and tricks can be a starting point for you to figure out your submissions process and start getting your work into the world.

Read the full article here . . . 

I had a blast chatting with folks this year at the virtual World Fantasy Convention! It was such an honor to get to answer questions about indie publishing and author marketing, and to get to be on a panel with some of my favorite poets. Here are the recordings for your watching pleasure: 

I have a new poem up at Twisted Moon Mag, Issue 5: We Hold Up Eternity 

You make me into all of your favorite things. Wax-winged, you model my body to your likeness. Everything must be similar, the remains. You step upon my altar, run a finger along my lips, lick the dust from your skin. It tastes like skin cells and sweat and stardust...

Read the whole poem here . . . 

I have a new poem up today at Liminality: A Magazine of Speculative Poetry. This poem is called “Acacia,” and it’s named after a plant commonly used in rituals and spellcraft.

Use to anoint torches and consecrate hope chests. Endows protection as well as psychic and mystical powers. If planted inside a fairy ring, it will bring prosperity to the closest home. If burned, it creates a hypnotic state that is often perilous.
​
TW: This poem deals with illness and cancer.

Read the poem at Liminality

Agents and editors are looking for submissions that quickly set themselves apart. The stand-out submissions are fairly easy to locate. While all of slushing is somewhat subjective (as far as taste goes, we all have different loves and hates), I’ve noticed that there are a couple of things that are distinguishable between the stories I loved from a slush pile and the ones I passed over quickly.

Read the full article here . . .

When you were a child, white skulls used to follow you through the woods. You tried to catch a glimpse of them, but when you turned your head their skeleton bodies would disappear, fading into the canopy. Only their bone-voices remained, clacking through the trees, knick knack, knick knack . . .

Read the full story at Curious Fictions . . . 

I've read a lot of writing prompts in my time, and they all suck. Seriously. What is with this “Write a poem about a man who finds a dog on the side of the road and then he brings it home and then it eats his shoe . . .” prompt bull-honkey? (Okay, I made that prompt up, but that’s how most of them sound.)

Read the full article here . . . 

​
I have a new poem up at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association mag Eye to the Telescope. It’s called “Now the Patient Recounts the Houses in Her Mind.” This poem is inspired by the work of author Shirley Jackson. It’s a combination of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Read it here . . . 

We’re all being forced to slow down right now, and some of us are better at it than others. But I’ve noticed that writers, and creatives in general, are really, really bad at this.

Read the full post here . . . 

Thanks to J.A. Sullivan for reading the Coppice & Brake Anthology from Crone Girls Press, and this lovely review of my story "The Red Shoes."

One of the stories I enjoyed most, “The Red Shoes” by Holly Lyn Walrath, is a perfect example of unexpected twists. Walrath gives us a story of a lonely old witch in a deserted forest. You would expect that when the witch finds a lost girl (“A lovely redheaded thing curled in the litter of the forest floor like a fairy in bracken”), she would immediately make a meal of her, as the witch had done with so many other helpless children through the years. Yet she doesn’t. Obsessed with the past when trolls, werewolves, and other sorcerers called the woods home, the old woman casts a spell on a pair of red shoes for the girl. But magic rarely brings us the things we most desire, especially not without a hefty price. This was a beautifully written story with sharp images, and it reminded me of being a child, listening to Grimms’ Fairy Tales for the first time.

Read the full review here . . .