Author Archives: Megan Lobsinger

About Megan Lobsinger

For as long as she can remember, Megan has been obsessed by words. She earned a PhD in creative writing from Ohio University, worked as an editor and proofreader at a Chicago-based ad agency, taught countless composition courses, and ran writing workshops for aspiring writers. She's now an Editor Coach at Pubmission. Join as a writer on Pubmission to get feedback on your work from Megan.

Wednesday Writing Exercise: A Part of Your Mind Escapes

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Megan Lobsinger

Maybe there’s a place of balance to be found between who we resolve to be and what we let ourselves see and hear and perceive. Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: The Return of the Light

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

This holiday season is the eleventh hour of staring at the blank screen, when all that time you spent waiting yields the fruit of your patient faith. Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Critical Hit

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

For this week’s Wednesday Writing Exercise I’m asking you to try my favorite collaborative writing exercise, which lives somewhere between Telephone and Pictionary. Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Back to the Word

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

Do you tend to hop straight from the first flicker of inspiration to the three-volume novel with your writing? Try this fun exercise to help you scale things back. Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Ransom Note

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

Write your own ransom note borrowing the voice of a known or invented character, a dead president, a Hollywood star, a fairy tale creature, a friend—anyone! Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Parroting Toward Voice

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

I think we find our voice by copying the voices of others. In the same manner that we take on the speech patterns of our best friends, that we try to listen to the same music as our older siblings, that we wear the clothes of the people we think are cool Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Write What You Don’t Know?

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

It’s good to write what you know, yes, but it’s also good to write toward what you most want to know, from a mind and a voice of delight and discovery. Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Telling It Slant

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

One of our jobs as writers—maybe even as people—is to recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary. It’s like Emily Dickinson says, “The truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind—” Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Jumping the Shark

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

Here’s the thing about jumping the shark—it’s pretty fun. Not only that, maybe if we engage in the desire to get ridiculous in our writing, we’ll free ourselves to discovery. Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Beginner’s Mind

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

As writers, we can get stuck inside our heads, forgetting that our best material comes from the richness of our lived experience. It’s when we convince ourselves to go out into the world with beginner’s mind, seeing everything in its radiance for the first time, that we gather the substance for writing with curiosity and joy. Continue reading →

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The Art of Being Concise: A Conversation with Brevity’s Dinty W. Moore

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

“I tell my student writers to spend 90% of their time perfecting their writing and 10% understanding how publishing works…If you reverse that equation—90% of your time spent fretting about publication contracts—you’ve made a big mistake.” Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Last Line First, First Line Last

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

“Mystery is not vagueness. Mystery is controlled.” —Amy Hempel In an interview with The Paris Review, the famously deliberate short story writer Amy Hempel describes her writing process, which occurs on the sentence level rather than the plot level. She … Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Object Lessons

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

Today’s Writing Exercise: Start by locating an object in your home—maybe one that fills you with emotion every time you look at it, or maybe one that you’ve ignored for years. Continue reading →

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Wednesday Writing Exercise: Dialogue

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Megan Lobsinger

“We didn’t need dialogue, we had faces!” –Norma Desmond, Sunset Boulevard Sometimes I wonder if people who have large families have a keener instinct for writing dialogue. Recently, I had the opportunity to introduce my quiet little family—mom, dad, two … Continue reading →

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