When I was in college, I studied playwriting with a memorable instructor, the novelist, playwright, and commercial Maine fisherman Gladden Schrock. Gladden was something of a character, a kind of mythical figure on campus. He doled out cryptic, twinkly wisdom while exuding an extremely masculine, weathered vibe. His classes were fun, and he peppered his critiques of our work with Gladden-specific phrases, the most famous of which was probably the concept of “the eight-foot bear.”

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“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” ― Virginia Woolf

Welcome to the fifth and final day of Essay Camp!

My dear campers, thank you for joining me this week for another session of Essay Camp. As we gather to write once more, I hope that those of you who chose to participate were able to get something out of the experience. Even if all you did was dip a…

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Welcome to the fourth day of Essay Camp.

If you’ve made it this far, well done. It’s actually quite hard for most people to commit to write every day for five days in a row and then actually do it.

Today we’re going to talk about structure. While ou…

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Welcome to the second day of Essay Camp.

I hope you’re getting settled nicely into your virtual cabins—there are extra blankets in the boathouse if you find yourself getting chilly, and a fictional fire that stays lit al…

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Welcome to the first day of Essay Camp

Traditionally, I like to welcome all the participants of Essay Camp to this virtual space we are going to…

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As I wrote to you a few days ago, my siblings and I just lost both of our parents unexpectedly, and are faced with steep dual end-of-life costs as a result. My sister made a GoFundMe to help cover some of the expenses, and we are so grateful to everyone who has contributed. Thank you, truly, from the bottom of our hearts.

To help with these …

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At least once a month, there’s a big discussion online about something or other that has happened in publishing. It might be about where novelists find inspiration, or how authors use sources in nonfiction. It might be about the research practices of journalists versus academics, the intent of a memoirist, or how much power and influence your average author has. Regardless of topic, one thing I’ve noticed—a thread that tends to run through all these discussions—is a series of common misunderstandings and misconceptions about how modern trade publishing actually works.

It makes sense, in a way. Why should your average non-author know what an author actually does in the process of writing, publishing, and promoting a book? Most representations of authors and the publishing industry in popular culture, from television and film to characters in books themselves, do not reflect reality. It’s a fantasy, and people project onto that fantasy. They see Carrie Bradshaw enjoying a book party that costs more than most people spend on a wedding, and assume that a toned-down version of this must await most authors at the end of the publishing rainbow.

Yes, every now and then, a first-time author who is not already famous will get a seven-figure book advance. But these are usually hot young debut novelists and are, quite literally, one in a million. They were the exact right person, with the exact right book, in the exact right place, at the exact right time. They did all the right work, and then got lucky. For the rest of us—the remaining nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine—the reality is very different.

So what is it really like to “get a book deal,” publish your first book, go on tour, and do press to promote it?

I’m a traditionally-published nonfiction author, so I’m talking about trade nonfiction publishing here. That means nonfiction books that are published by the Big Five international publishing houses (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Simon&Schuster, HarperCollins, and Macmillan), as well as “the independents” (smaller presses not owned by a large corporate conglomerate), as opposed to academic presses, texbooks, self-publishing, and other options.

Without further ado, here are nine basic trade publishing myths.

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What: Essay Camp: A March Write-Along

When: Monday March 23rd – Friday March 27th, 2026.

Where: Online

Who: Award-winning writer and author Summer Brennan teaches essay writing and the creative process, with thousands of writers participating. This session, author and Paris Review columnist Katy Kelleher joins as contributing essays editor.

How: Sign up for free emails from A Writer’s Notebook and follow along at home.

Why: Reconnect with your writing practice and plant the seeds for future success.

Cost: Free, or a suggested $32 donation.

Details: Join thousands of other writers for a five-day essay writing workshop in the write-along style. The ongoing process of writing is one of perpetual drift and return. We are pulled away from our writing practice and then we come back, over and over. Life, the noise of the world, and the constant clamor of our own personal responsibilities can make writing difficult. This habit of return is one of the most important skills that any writer can cultivate, whether we do it daily or only once every few years.

The primary goal of Essay Camp, first held in the summer of 2021, is simply to get you writing again. If you’re already writing, it can also help you to connect with your established practice in a deeper way.

Participants receive daily emails with suggested writing and reading assignments that can be tailored to fit any schedule. There are no specific time or word-count requirements. Each writer is encouraged to make a creative plan for the workshop that fits their own individual needs. At the end of the five days we’ll look back at what we’ve written and spend some time crafting at least one finished essay or other piece of writing. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be done.

Emails will go out every morning at 6:00 a.m. Central European Time, so be aware that those living in the Americas will be receiving them the night before.

If you want to participate and you’re already signed up to get the free or paid version of this newsletter, then you’re all set! If you’re not signed up and wish to do so, you can sign up below.

Subscribe now

Remember, if you only want to receive Essay Camp emails and not the full newsletter, be sure to check and uncheck the appropriate boxes on your subscription management page.

See you in March!

A note on the illustration: I have long been inspired by the art of Amy Friend. She is an award-winning Canadian artist working with photography, installation, and community-based collaborations, “exploring personal and collective histories, time, land-memory, oceans, dust, and our connections to the universe.” Read more about her work on her website. Please follow her or purchase a print if interested!

Enjoy my writing and want to support it? Become a paid subscriber today. You’ll get full access to craft talks, essays, notebook entries, sketchbook pages, and the popular semiannual write-along workshop Essay Camp. You can also buy my books The Oyster War and High Heel, “like” my posts by tapping the heart icon, share them on Substack Notes or other social media, and/or send them to a friend.

It was January 1st, 2023, and I had big plans. Who doesn’t, on the first of the year? As the old year drew to a close, I had looked back over the previous twelve months and thought about what had and hadn’t worked for me—on a lot of levels. Like most people, I imagine, there were things that were great, and other things that weren’t. One of the things that stood out to me was how good it felt when I took the time to sit down and write about nothing in particular. It felt good to do it, and even better when I realized that what I wrote during these sessions was—and this shocked me—some of my best work. Okay, maybe not my best-best work, but it was crossing into territory I found exciting. I was experimenting. I was honest. I myself found it compelling to the point that it didn’t matter to me what other people thought. I decided, right then and there, that I wanted to commit to writing every day for the next year.

I write for a living, and so I write most days anyway, but still there was something about writing purely for the sake of writing that felt different. There is a lot that goes into writing that doesn’t actually involve the specific act of putting sentences down on the page. Even without taking into consideration things like admin or the realities of running a Substack—with journalism, topical essays, and narrative nonfiction in particular, there are a lot of other components that you have to pull in. There are interviews, and hours spent in archives, and online research, and fact checking, and a million other things. Then you have to organize it all, and sometimes translate it, and think through your story beats. Even when I was writing, I wasn’t always writing-writing. If I hit a period of weeks when sentence crafting wasn’t on the agenda, it was easy to fall out of practice.

There is an adage I’ve heard used by parents of young children, that “sleep begets sleep,” meaning that a baby who is well-rested during the day will also have an easier time falling asleep at night. This can also be true for adults. If you’re over-tired, it can actually make your insomnia worse. Similarly, I have come to believe that writing begets writing, in that the more you write, the easier writing becomes. Perhaps that sounds obvious, but there are certainly divergent opinions on this. If a student or a friend feels like they’re blocked, I usually recommend writing something other than the thing they’re blocked on—fan fiction, an angry screed, anything at all—just to get the gears moving again. It may not work for everyone, but regardless, many writers do believe in the power of writing something every day, no matter what. A common form this takes is a practice called “morning pages.”

I first started writing morning pages back in 2005 or so, after rediscovering Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Morning pages are one of the foundations of her program, along with things like taking yourself out on weekly “artist dates,” and creating a sense of abundance through small acts of care and indulgence. The idea with morning pages is that you write three pages longhand, stream-of-consciousness style, first thing in the morning. You roll out of bed, put pen to paper, and go.

I was primed to accept this practice, since my college writing mentor, Mary Oliver, always stressed the importance of a daily writing “appointment.” (I know, I mention her a lot, but her teaching had a big influence on how I write and teach; it can’t be avoided.)

In the years after my college graduation, however, I stopped writing poems. I stopped making appointments to write things that could turn into poems, and so poems had stopped landing on me. That is how it used to feel—that poems landed on me, as I walked around, going about my day—or at least they used to. I wasn’t sure I was a young poet anymore, but I did still seem to be a writer of some kind. I wrote, or I tried to. I went to journalism school. After a while, I opened up The Artist’s Way again, and started writing morning pages. Cameron has described it as being akin to “a tiny whisk-broom that dislodges dust from every corner of our life,” and it worked for me, I think, on that level, at least for a while. But the problem with my morning pages and that act of “sweeping out” is that what I tended to be left with in the end was just that: mental dust.

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Dear Reader,

I first shared a post with this title about three years ago, but since we recently reached the end of another NaNoWriMo, I thought it might be worth sharing an edited version again.

I first wrote this in the wake of a mini-publishing scandal: a young writer had just admitted to extensive plagiarism in her soon-to-be-published first novel. This stemmed, in part, or so she said, from finding herself with a book contract at a major publishing house, and the ticking clock of an impending deadline, without really understanding how the industry worked.

I originally wrote this for the unpublished author in general; those who were starting to wonder just how their work-in-progress might turn into an actual published book one day, and hoping that this might help to explain the process.

To give fair warning: it is geared mostly towards those publishing in America. I know it applies to other countries as well, though not all. In France, for example, where things are a bit different, talking about your “literary agent” at a party of French writers can cause you to come across as a bit of a diva—or so I’ve been told.

Even so, I hope this can be of use to some of you!

Book contracts do not come to those who work the hardest or are the most deserving. At least, not necessarily. It isn’t fair, and isn’t meant to be. Intense effort is required, but that’s not always enough. It is merely a question of whether or not what you bring to the table can solve a particular problem for an agent or an editor: they need a book, a certain kind of book, at a certain time, to inspire and/or to sell.

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Welcome to the fifth and final day of Essay Camp!

My dear …

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Welcome to the fourth day of Essay Camp.

Hello campers. How is the writing going? Have you had a chance to take any walks around our imaginary campus to see the autumn colors? Have you pressed any dream-leaves between the pages of your notebook?

If you haven’t managed to write much this session, or …

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Welcome to the third day of Essay Camp.

How is camp treating you so far? Have you had a chance to visit the imaginary lake? Enjoyed the yellow leaves and red berries of the haw…

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Welcome to the second day of Essay Camp.

To write for one day might be called a fluke, but to write for two days in a row begins to establish a pattern.

To develop a regular writing practice is a little like building a greenhouse. It’s a space that is protected…

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Welcome to the first day of a very special edition of Essay Camp.

Here we are once again at last. You made it. You’ve booked passage across imaginary oceans, weathered virtual long-haul flights, and driven through fictional nights to reach this place. Welcome. I’m so glad you could make it. It…

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Dear Essay Campers,

Welcome to this rather impromptu session of Essay Camp for November 2025! It has certainly been too long. The fifth semi-annual Essay Camp is set to begin this Saturday, November 15th. If you plan to participate, you might want to begin preparing, mentally and logistically, over the next few days.

As I mentioned before, since I’m still…

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Or should I say dear writers, since this is intended for the writers and writing-curious among you. As part of this project to re-visit and re-share old notebook entries as a way to keep the newsletter going while still on “sabbatical,” I’m also going to start doing some Essay Camps again.

Since I cannot yet return to teaching, these will …

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