Improbable Press Blog

The first in a series of writing prompts for your inspiration, shared every Thursday. Feel free to share anything at all, fandom, original, a poem, an ode, whatever you're inspired, share in the comments below (moderated to control the bots), or just run off into a meadow and together you and the pic can share your love in the sunshine. Or! Even better! Take it and build something from it on AO3 or in your writing workshop or wherever! Either. Or. All? All is good. Shall we begin? More Writing Prompts Eye of the BeholderAll It Takes

...well, the subject line either caught your eye or brought up your bile. So either you're welcome or I'm sorry. However there's a point and that's this… Urine, Fiction & Non-Fiction Writing As writers we sometimes think we know stuff. Like we all "know" urine is sterile (nope, it's not), and maybe we've had our sea captain hollering "I'll stop the pain o' the fierce Lion's Mane jelly, me laddy," as she pees on the laddy, but no no nope, urine very much won't. The point is that reality's ever so much more interesting than these things we think we...

I absolutely can't read how-to books about writing. It's like asking a caterpillar how she manages to control all those legs. Do that and, if she stops to think about it, she may never move again. Ever.So reading books about writing does not help me with writing, unless help is defined by overwhelming ennui and a need to binge Great British Bake-Off. So. Instead I read a lot of books about the things I write about. When I was writing Sherlock Holmes stories for breakfast, lunch, and after-dinner dessert, I adored books about science, such as: * The Science of...

When you're not the only one — or the crazy-pants importance of diversity, in strengthening a dream by seeing others DO.

You’ve written tens of thousands of words of short stories, fanfiction, character development, and you want to sell something damn it. Obviously you’re already a writer — you write, so that makes you a writer, that's the rules — but now you want to be a professional. A professional is paid to write. Even if she makes £1 she’s a pro. She was paid. So, how do you do it, how do you make that first sale? I know it seems hard (it did to me), because you get a lot of rejections or just silence (which is worse? Is...