A lot of writers can’t afford to spend as much time here anymore — I used to write here a lot. Twice a week, on average. I’d write fun stories like why people hated Mary Shelley as much as they loved Frankenstein, the funny way men found love in 1800s America, and the real woman who wore Rose’s necklace on the Titanic. One of…

What they did to her was horrific, and it is still legal. — Margaret Hennessey and her sister were walking to the market when they were stopped by a group of police officers. It was a beautiful, clear winter morning in Sacramento, California. There was a gentle breeze, she remembered, and the temperature was pushing close to 50. It was February 25, 1919. …

It hones in on the problem a lot of writers have. — John Greene writes YA (young adult) books. Six of his books have been nabbed by major Hollywood film studios and five hit the New York Times bestseller list and stuck. When he published The Fault In Our Stars, it made 9 million the first year. So it makes perfect sense…

You don’t do the right thing for approval. You do it because it’s the right thing. — Otis Smith had to drop out of medical school. No choice. He was just a poor black man in Georgia. Paid his way into college delivering newspapers and picking tobacco. But it was only second semester and his money had run out. …

I was going to call this “How Lenny Rachitsky earned $65K” but I think I need to back up a little so it makes sense — Couple of days ago, another writer tagged me on a post. He was crushed about how badly his earnings tanked. He used to earn $400-$1000 every month. In October he earned $32. So I wrote about why writers throw in the towel. I know — writers write because they have…

How many times can we break our own hearts before we can’t anymore? — This morning, Jamie Jackson tagged me on a story. He’s crushed. Said he used to make $400 to $1000 per month here. In October he made $32. It’s not just here. I’m not slamming Medium, so you know. This place was where I started writing again after a long dry…

AI writers take our work without permission and I’m not okay with that. Guess who owns the technology behind it? — Create amazing blog posts 10X faster with AI. That’s what it says on the homepage of Jasper.ai. “Blog posts” is animated and changes to other words. Like… Create amazing blog posts, marketing copy, sales emails, SEO content, web content. Recently I read a post by a guy who is building an entire content-rich site all populated with writing…

Then she apologized to the man who “should have” won — If you were a young woman in the late 1800s, the only thing you were supposed to achieve in your life was a good marriage. That was a real problem for Edith Newbold Jones. She was a born storyteller and just wanted to write. That was a real problem for…

The woman who was buried head first, upside down in a vertical grave. — She ran with a pronounced limp, clutching her thin cloak as she fled back to her cottage as fast as her bad foot could hobble. Cuckoo Hall, the villagers called it, but it was neither a hall nor a cottage. It was a hovel. A dirt floor shack. The men…