45 Writing & Publishing Posts from The Caffeinated Writer

craft essays, submission opportunities, and inspiration

Thank you for reading The Caffeinated Writer. Here's an index to help you navigate the newsletter. It includes posts on the craft of fiction, publishing, and the business of writing, as well as personal posts on the writing life.

The Caffeinated Writer includes hundreds of posts, all of which are available in full to paid subscribers. Not all of the posts are listed here, but this .

Paid annual subscribers receive a complimentary copy of The Caffeinated Writer, available as an ebook and as a print PDF.

Craft Posts:

• The Lives and Logic of Minor Characters

• Every Story Happens Somewhere: Notes on Place in Fiction

• Skip the Outline: How to Write a Scene List for Your Novel

• Revising Fiction: 10 Things to Cut from Your Novel

• The Art of the Name: Six Tips for Choosing Character Names

• How to Write a Novel: 10 Steps to Get You Started (top post in craft)

• The Art of Pacing

• I Went to Costa Rica to Find the Heart of My Novel: On Research

• Minimalism, Meaning, and a Red Wheelbarrow: How to Write Description in Fiction

• Break Through Writer’s Block with a Narrative Experiment: 7 Story Structures to Try

• Screenwriting Principles for Fiction Writers

• When to Let Your Book Go: How to Stop Revising, Start Submitting, and Move on to Your Next Project

• Writing a Short Story (video)

• An Exploratory Writing Exercise in Rhythm and Repetition

Publishing Posts

• How I Met My Literary Agent

• What Publishers Do for Authors

• How to Break into Publishing Without a Referral

• Where to Submit Your Un-agented Story Collection or Novel

• I Write Four Substacks Because I Drink Too Much Coffee

• How to Start an Author Newsletter on Substack

• What Makes a Successful Substack Post?

• The Best Book Formatting Software for Independent Publishing

• How One Professor Helped His Students Publish 95 Books

• Five Fiction Writing Contests, Plus a Call for Novel Submissions (top post in Publishing)

• Why Now Is a Great Time to Be a Debut Author

Inspiration

• 13 Great Books for Writers

• 15 Quick Writing Prompts

• Becoming a Writer Later in Life (top post from the archives)

• Let’s All Type Like It’s 1988

• A Little Scattered Chaos May Be Great for Your Writing Life

• A Hurricane, A Bad Man, and a Great Teacher: On Finding Your Reason to Write

• On Notebook Fragments and Our Many Writing Selves

• Dispatches from the Writing Life

• Why Influence is Overrated: Finding Your Creative Focus in a Noisy World

• Writers at Parties: An Awkward Conversation

• In Praise of Solitude

• Writing Habits to Sustain You

• Dispatch from Paris: Why Writing a Book Takes Time

• Writers Who Started Later in Life

• Getting Lost in the Writing

• 5 Things Worth Reading

• 5 Things Worth Reading for Authors

Miscellaneous

• Should Novelists Fear AI?

• A Workshop for Writers Over 50

• Can AI Write Like Chekhov?

In addition to The Caffeinated Writer, I maintain an author newsletter, My Fiction Obsession. There, I shared original serial fiction and flash fiction, plus more personal posts on writing, as well as fiction reading recommendations:

• Where I Write: A Minor Ode to a Blue Velvet Chair

• Living la Rentree in California: On Revising My Novel

• Novels Featuring a Writer as Protagonist

Do you want to help me decide what to publish in 2026? You can weigh in here—it only takes a second! Thank you in advance for sharing your opinion.

Thank you again for reading the Caffeinated Writer! Wherever you are geographically, whatever your phase of life/love/health, I hope books and writing have offered you joy and comfort this year.

As always, happy writing.

Michelle