I am aghast at what that publisher said to you. Someone like that should not ever be invited to another pitch event--he obviously had no patience or compassion for young writers. But I find his object to "manipulation" puzzling. Aren't all writers...

I keep resolving to do this and I always fall away from it. Too many other things get in the way. At least I've started writing (and contributing) regularly to a writing-challenge site. It's kept me going and led me to new ways of expression. But...

I think what you said about writing "the way it feels" is what a writer really needs to do, and empathy and imagination can fill in experience gaps there. I wrote a short short story about a woman who had had an abortion at age seventeen and how it...