Choosing a word of the year is a practice I picked up last year to try implementing in my life rather than doing a new year’s resolution. The concept revolves around choosing one word to focus your actions for the year around instead of one goal. In 2018, I chose the word “Progress.”

15 Gift Ideas for Writers

Finding gifts for writers can be challenging. What do they want? How can you help them celebrate their craft? Can I buy it online? To answer those questions, I’ve created a gift guide of 15 things to buy the writer in your life. If you’re looking for the book lovers in your life, I’ve already released a gift guide for them here.

20 Amazon Gift Ideas for Book Lovers

It’s the time of year for buying gifts for all the people you love in your life, including the book lovers. After Black Friday, I hardly ever have time to actually go to the store, so I like to buy my remaining gifts on Amazon. Not only is Amazon fast (Yay Prime!), but you can also earn cash back in certain departments with Ebates.

This is What's Wrong with America

I can honestly say that I have never shared my political opinion on social media or a blog. I have thought about it multiple times and a few suggestive posts have slipped out, but I believe that social media is for sharing positivity, not bashing or bringing other people down. However, many people have asked me questions on where I stand and I decided to write this blog post as the end all, be all of my political opinion on the internet.

23 Things I Learned About Writing and Life Before 23

Today is my birthday and I’m officially 23. While I know in the grand scheme of things I am young, I still feel like I’ve learned a few things in my brief moment on Earth. I present to you my musings on everything I’ve learned about writing and life before 23.

How to Keep Writing When You're Sick

Last week, I was laying-in-bed-hating-my-life sick. The kind of sick that makes you look at all of your best-laid plans and say, “Nope. I’ll just die here alone and unproductive.” Unfortunately, we can’t always stop writing or working on our passion projects. To keep you going, I’ve compiled 5 tips to keep writing when you’re sick.

Nature Saved My Writing

Before I graduated college, I lived for a month at a family friend’s lakehouse. This lake house was a tech-free zone—no internet, no cell service, no landline phone, and had a TV with only three channels. When I first arrived, I was in a terrible emotional place and frustrated with my lack of internet. I had struggled with writing and anything creative for most of 2017. At this point in my life, I had to complete an essay for workshop and I believed that nothing would ever come to me or be as good as my last essay. However, at the tech-free lake house, I stumbled upon my own version of Thoreau’s Walden Pond.

3 Writing Mistakes You're Making With Sex Scenes

To finish this February’s love theme, we’re going to talk about sex. Cue Salt-N-Pepa! “Let’s talk about sex baby, let’s talk about all the good thing and bad things that may be…” But on a serious note, writing sex scenes can be difficult. From trying to figure out to describe body parts to not making a mini porno, sex scenes are complex, to say the least. To help you out, today I’m going to tell you the 3 mistakes you’re making when writing sex scenes.

Grief Pools Part 2: Rivkey

This is the final part of my short story "Grief Pools" that I posted yesterday. If you haven't read the first part with Nora you can find it linked here. I hope you enjoy the ending! Feel free to leave a comment down below. Happy reading!

Grief Pools Part 1: Nora

Hey everyone. After many months of not sharing some writing, I decided to share a reworked fiction piece about love and grief. Fiction isn't always my strong suit since I  mainly focus on nonfiction, but I thought the story fit in well with my theme of love this month. Since this short story is a little long, I split into two parts. One part today with the first narrator, Nora. Tomorrow, I will post the second part, with the second narrator Rivkey. A link to tomorrows post will be here and at the end of this part. I hope you enjoy this short story! Feel free to leave your comments down below. 

Top 5 Audiobooks You Should Listen to Now

Audiobooks are great to listen to during your morning commute and at work. I personally love listening to audiobooks at my own job since I do mainly computer work at my desk. If you are new to listening to audiobooks, feel free to check out this post about the pros and cons of listening to audiobooks. Since I began listening to audiobooks, I have heard some gems and deleted ones I couldn’t get through due to the narrator. To inspire you to listen to more audiobooks, I’ve compiled five of my personal favorites that I couldn’t stop listening to.

The Two Best Things About Writing Nonfiction

After many weeks of “serious” and intelligent posts, I thought I would take the time this week to write a more “fun” post. This will be my fifth year writing/studying creative nonfiction and I have definitely learned a few positives and negative points when it comes to writing nonfiction. Today, (in good spirits) I’m going to lay out for you the top two positives and top two negatives about writing nonfiction.

Book Review: 'the princess saves herself in this one' by amanda lovelace

Today is an exciting day. Why do you ask? Because today marks the first in many book reviews I plan to do on The Writing Addict. I’ve reviewed podcasts and audiobooks, so it only makes sense to add physical books to the list. To begin the series, I’ve decided to review the princess saves herself in this one by amanda lovelace.

How to Write a Braided Essay

A braided essay is a popular structure for creative nonfiction essays. Braided essays generally use 2-3 moments or topics and create an essay surrounding an event or question. While collage style essays are a personal favorite of mine, I love a good braided essay too, like many readers. This may explain why braided essays are used by many authors to entertain readers including Joann Beard, Chelsea Biondolillo, and Anna Redsand to name a few.

But what is a braided essay, and how do I incorporate it in my writing? Don’t worry reader/writer, I’m here to lay it all out for you, so you can be on your way writing braided essays in no time.

6 Things to Consider When Trying Audiobooks

Audiobooks have grown in popularity over the past few years thanks to Audible and other streaming services. At first, I thought audiobooks were weird because I couldn’t imagine listening to books instead of reading them. However, over the past few months, I have reconsidered my opinion. I’ve grown to love listening to audiobooks.

If I have learned anything over the course of my writing life, it’s that reading for inspiration is essential. I said it in my “4 Things I Learned from My College Writing Program,” but writers cannot work in a vacuum. Therefore, it’s essential for writers to be voracious readers. But, it’s difficult to find time for work, chores, writing, reading, and life in general. Sure, you can prioritize, or you can discover the time-saving wonder of audiobooks. Nothing is without its pro and cons, so here are six things to consider when diving into audiobooks.