Writing Craft & Tips
Readers do not decide whether to trust you at the end of chapter one. They decide in the third sentence. Here is how I audit prose one line at a time, and why rhythm matters more than vocabulary.
By Robert Shumake · August 10, 2026 · 3 min read
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After eighteen months, two false starts, and one abandoned first-person draft, the next novel finally has a name. Here is the title, the cover, and an honest account of what took so long.
August 4, 2026 · 2 min read
Everyone prepares you for rejection and for launch day. Nobody prepares you for month seven of a first draft, when the book is too big to hold and too unfinished to show anyone.
July 28, 2026 · 2 min read
Older titles are taking a larger share of sales every year. That is not just a statistic about catalogues — it changes what a debut needs to do, and how long a book has to find its audience.
July 20, 2026 · 2 min read
Not prompts for starting something new — prompts for the scene you already have, the one where two characters keep talking and nothing happens. Each takes fifteen minutes.
July 13, 2026 · 2 min read
Twelve people, four months, every book I have written, in order. Then they sent me eleven pages of notes. What a group of committed readers taught me about my own work.
July 6, 2026 · 2 min read
Translators are the closest readers a book will ever have. I spoke with one about what she finds when she goes line by line through prose that was never meant to leave its own language.
June 29, 2026 · 2 min read
Drafting and revising use opposite instincts, and most writers try to do both with the same brain. Here is the four-pass system I use to keep them apart.
June 22, 2026 · 2 min read
Structure templates get a bad reputation because writers use them as blueprints. They are far more useful as diagnostic tools applied after a draft exists.
June 13, 2026 · 2 min read
On protecting attention, the difference between rest and avoidance, and why I stopped trying to write on the days I was most informed.
June 4, 2026 · 2 min read
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