Every January, I’d write the same goal in my notebook. “This is the year I write a book.” I did this for six years. Each year, I’d start a new document, stare at the cursor, and quit in twenty minutes. The dream seemed too big. The blank page felt too empty. I felt stuck, like […]
I still remember the night I typed the last sentence of my first manuscript. My hands were shaking. My coffee had gone cold hours ago. I stared at that final period on the screen and felt a wave of pride. That tiny dot meant I’d actually done it — I’d written an entire book. The […]
I sat at my kitchen table a few years ago, staring at a blank screen. I had a real story inside me, not fiction. I wanted to share what I learned over a decade. But starting felt like standing at a mountain’s base with no map. Many feel this way. British author Ed Parnell said […]
I sat at my desk one Saturday morning, staring at a blank document for two hours straight. My coffee went cold. My cat gave up waiting for attention. I had a powerful true story burning inside me, but I couldn’t get a single word onto the page. That’s when I realized something Abbie Emmons often […]
I sat at my desk three years ago, staring at a blank screen. I had many ideas but didn’t know where to start. Writing a book seemed huge and scary. That night, I read about Tom Wolfe’s daily writing habit. He wrote 2,000 words every day. This simple discipline clicked for me. I started with […]
A few years ago, I was in a small coffee shop in Brooklyn. I stared at a blank screen for months. I had lots of research and interviews on a topic I loved. But, I didn’t know how to write a book that people would read. This struggle changed me. I learned that nonfiction writing […]
I stared at my laptop for two hours last Tuesday. Not a single word was written. My cursor blinked like a tiny judge. I had a true story to tell but couldn’t start. That night, I found an interview with Sonia Faleiro. She worked on 3,000 pages and hundreds of interviews for a project. It […]
I was stuck in a Brooklyn coffee shop three years ago. I was trying to write about my grandmother’s immigration story. The words were dull, and the scenes felt lifeless. I was about to quit when I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Coates’ writing was raw and powerful. It showed me what […]
I stared at a blank Word document for three hours one rainy Tuesday night. My cursor blinked like a tiny heartbeat on the screen. I had a story burning inside me — a memoir about growing up in rural Kentucky — but I had no clue where to begin. That night, I typed one sentence. […]
I still remember sitting in a Barnes & Noble café back in 2019. I was flipping through Brené Brown’s “Dare to Lead.” Something clicked in my brain that afternoon. I thought, “I have stories and expertise worth sharing too.” That single moment launched me into a journey I wasn’t prepared for — writing my first […]
