What Is a Memoir’s Essential Question and Why Do You Need One?
The first question is often some version of “What happened to me?” Understanding it helps craft a story that speaks to your readers’ needs.
https://janefriedman.com/finding-your-memoirs-essential-question/
11 Steps from Your Big Fat Mess to Your Next Draft
If you’re overwhelmed by the volume of accumulated words after months or years of generating new material, here’s how to tame and shape them.
https://janefriedman.com/11-steps-from-your-big-fat-mess-to-your-next-draft/
What I Learned from Turning Myself Into an AI Chatbot
One book coach wondered whether an AI tool, trained on his own archive of advice, could answer authors’ questions as well as he could.
https://janefriedman.com/what-i-learned-from-turning-myself-into-an-ai-chatbot/
Why Your Story Keeps Stalling (and How to Get It Moving)
Stories are like trains: a connected chain of main events (railcars) and transitions (couplings), with very little stopping at platforms.
https://janefriedman.com/why-your-story-keeps-stalling-and-how-to-get-it-moving/
Writing Beyond Ourselves
Writing outside our lived experience isn’t just about getting facts right—it’s also about learning who we are when we truly listen to others.
https://janefriedman.com/writing-beyond-ourselves/
The Big Mistake That Keeps Writers From Finishing a Novel
One writer explains why you shouldn’t necessarily get feedback on your first draft—and what you should do instead.
https://janefriedman.com/the-big-mistake-that-keeps-writers-from-finishing-a-novel/
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BeautynTechs stands out with quality over quantity transparency over shortcuts and long term SEO impact. Our guest posting service helps brands grow with confidence. Read More https://biz.prlog.org/beautyntechs/
#TrustedSEO #BeautynTechs #GuestPost #EthicalSEO #ContentStrategy #DigitalAuthority
Finding the Right Tone for Your Memoir
Your story’s tone and content don’t have to match—and when they don’t, they can combine to create something greater than their sum.
https://janefriedman.com/finding-the-right-tone-for-your-memoir/
How I Navigated My Way to Memoir Deal from a Small Publisher
Learning from others and practicing patience while navigating the publishing industry led to a bright light at the end of the tunnel.
https://janefriedman.com/how-i-navigated-my-way-to-memoir-deal-from-a-small-publisher/
GUEST POST :: Hunger by Holly Day #Excerpt #GuestPost
Hunger is a funny thing. It makes people act in ways they never believed they’d do.
https://authoraddisonalbright.com/2026/02/04/guest-post-hunger-by-holly-day-excerpt-guestpost/
The Glimmers You Find While Chasing the Whale
While in pursuit of our writing goals, the serendipitous experiences along the way might be just as meaningful as landing the big fish.
https://janefriedman.com/the-glimmers-you-find-while-chasing-the-whale/
Star Wars is Bullsh*t! – Lies Science Fiction Taught Me About Strategic Planning
The Star Wars saga is iconic, whether it’s the original movies or the much deliberated prequels and sequels. Love them or hate them, each movie has iconic scenes that ensnare the mind. I was too young to see the original trilogy in theaters, but I saw the prequels and sequels in theaters and all nine movies sold me a tale of heroism and bravery. But they also sold me the idea that battles and wars were won by a handful of General Officers sitting around a table making detailed decisions about the war.
What a crock of shit.
Sure, Generals and Admirals drive the conflict. They have the big, overarching vision of how the war should go. That said, they aren’t tacticians and Star Wars lied to me!
It’s not the Generals and Admirals, resplendent in their perfectly pressed uniforms or artfully crafted Rebel style, who write strategy. No, it’s some poor neglected Rebel equivalent of a staff weenie making best guesses in the back of an Empire cubical farm of Rebel hangar deck.
The Lie: The Generals/Admirals stand around a big sand table and hash out their grand plan. Maybe one heroic intelligence officer/spy arrives with the critical piece of information, just in time to seal the deal.
The Reality: Five underpaid, unappreciated Rebel staff weenies frantically try to pull information from other bases about supply lines, X-Wing maintenance rates, and transport pilot availability. There are no intelligence officers, they’re making best guesses as they go, and are probably all considering joining the Empire if it means a bed that isn’t a pile of blankets on a crate. By the time the plan gets to the Generals and Admirals, they give a quick “yeah, looks good” and waltz off to their meeting. At the meetings, they spend 5% of the time listening to the others for conflict and 95% of the time wondering if they’re eligible to retire and “how hard out it really be to run a dive bar on Canto Bight?”
The above is a very basic outline of The Lie but it can be seen in each set of trilogies, thus ensuring each generation is duped into believing this outrageous falsehood.
Case 1, the original trilogy: Episode IV, A New Hope
The Lie: Mon Mothma and General Dodonna brief their plan directly to the pilots.
The Truth: Four harried, grimy, and exhausted people cooked up this plan in a half lit, unused storage room on Yavin 4. Two X-Wing pilots and one transport pilot, all too DNIF to fly were joined by one Rebel maintenance officer who bitched about the pilots the whole time, and spent the 48 hours before the battle scanning the Death Star plans. Bleary from lack of sleep, they hand a crudely sketched holo-point to Mon Momtha and General Dodonna, both offensively clean and wakeful, just before the pair walked into the briefing with only a quickly muttered “Exhaust ports, ya gotta hit those. Big boom. Whole thing goes…” before promptly passing out on any available flat surface including a crate full of munitions.
“The Force is real, right?” one pilot muttered later.
“Sure, it’s got to be,” the Rebel maintenance officer told him as he knocked back his seventh shot of liquor, something he’d been brewing in his room with spare parts from the X-Wings and a start cart.
“How’d ya know?” the transport pilot asked, face still haggard from the scanning and planning marathon.
“It must be. Our plan was shit!” the maintenance officer said and promptly passed out into his drink.
Case 2, the prequel trilogy: Episode I, The Phantom Menace
The Lie: Master Qui-Gon Jinn and a young Obi Wan are sent to a Federation flagship to resolve a trade dispute. Rather than settle things politically, they engage in “aggressive negotiations.”
The Truth: Galactic Republic strategic planners spent frantic weeks secretly engaging with politicians for a backdoor negotiation. The Jedi Order instead sent a habitual line stepper and his padawan. Somewhere a Republic planner is sobbing into a Coruscant Sunrise crying, “These assholes haven’t read Corbett or Dolman once have they? They have no idea how critical a damn line of communication is!”
Case 3, the sequel trilogy: Episode VII, The Force Awakens
The Lie: Hidden away on D’Qar, Rebel forces decipher the plan of… yes, a bigger, better Death Star, Starkiller Base. General Organa stands around with her top Generals and aides, determining how to attack the Death St– err, Starkiller Base and blow it up.
The Truth: Actually, this isn’t far from the truth. Really, the only difference is that instead of immediately sending Han, Chewie, and Finn off to Starkiller, they would have first made Finn, or the lowest ranking officer in the room, sit down at a terminal. General Organa, with six colonels, would have watched over his shoulder as they typed out the plan for dissemination to all available Rebel forces.
Somewhere in a back room off the main floor, a pair of Rebel soldiers discuss whether joining the First Order “might mean actually getting a real bed to sleep in?”
“What?”
“I mean, I’m not saying I’m defecting or anything but… do you think they get real beds?” one exhausted Rebel officer says to his companion.
“I mean, probably. Those dreadnaughts are pretty big, I’m sure people aren’t more than two or three to a room.” There’s a hopeful air in their voice.
They both stare wistfully into their monitors for a second.
“I mean, I wouldn’t–”
“I’d never–” they say in unison.
But a brief glance at the other, they know perfectly well their companion would sell the entire disorganized mess of a Rebel order out for a hot meal, a hot shower, a warm bed, and some recognition for all the work they do.
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About the Author: KR Paul is the author of the “Limited Logistics” series and “The Ballad of Ashes and Spring: A Hades and Persephone Retelling” as well as an ultramarathon runner who hasn’t quit her day job yet. She can be found on Twitter @AuthorKRPaul as well as AuthorKRPaul.com and is known to be a delightful blend of über-jock and bookish nerd. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Air Force or the U.S. government.
Image: Return of the Jedi. Lucasfilm, Ltd
Have Pen, Laptop, and ChatGPT, Will Publish (guest post) – Daily Nous
Have Pen, Laptop, and ChatGPT, Will Publish (guest post)
By Justin Weinberg. January 19, 2026 at 9:00 am
How, as a researcher, can you use AI tools like ChatGPT in a way that doesn’t compromise your integrity, creativity, and independence?
In the following guest post, Jimmy Alfonso Licon (Arizona State University) explains how he does it, laying out how he approaches his writing process and the roles he assigns ChatGPT in it.
As Dr. Licon describes it, his “resulting workflow is neither purely human nor AI-written.”
Those who make use of AI in their research and writing are encouraged to share their methods and processes in the comments. Also of particular interest is how human-AI “hybrid” works should be treated, institutionally (by journals, universities). Discussion welcome.
(A version of this piece first appeared at Dr. Licon’s newsletter, Uncommon Wisdom.)
[“Human Hang-Up Machine” by Agnes Denes]
Have Pen, Laptop, and ChatGPT, Will Publish
or How I Use AI Without Sacrificing Creativity and Independence, by Jimmy Alfonso Licon
People sometimes imagine writing as a flash of inspiration, a heroic sprint at the keyboard, and then a finished paper. My own process is considerably less cinematic and much more modular. It involves a pile of printed articles, a pen, a computer, and a large language model. Each plays a specific role. And together, they help me turn a half-formed idea into a shareable, defensible piece of scholarship.
I usually start with a nagging thought. An irritation with a familiar argument, or a pattern I see across different debates, or a question that just won’t leave me alone—something that continues to bug me. At this stage, I begin by writing down a very rough abstract: a paragraph or two sketching the core claim, the basic structure of the argument, and why it might matter. It is only meant to capture the rough intuition. Nothing beyond that. The point is to get the idea out of my head and onto paper where I can see it, poke at it, and at some point, ask questions about. The three main questions I ask are: is the idea genuinely novel? Is it interesting enough? Is it intellectually defensible? The answer must be affirmative in each case before I proceed.
So for the next step, I hunt down the relevant literature by asking ChatGPT, surfing Google Scholar, and asking colleagues who work on similar stuff. That means scanning databases, following citations, and running it by ChatGPT, prompting it to analyze the idea like a referee at a top journal. If I find that someone has already the same article—or something close enough—I will usually shelve the idea. Sometimes, though, it means shifting the focus, narrowing the scope, or locating a gap or tension in the literature. The goal here is to avoid writing something redundant.
Editor’s Note: The featured image at the top by WP AI. –DrWeb
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Have Pen, Laptop, and ChatGPT, Will Publish (guest post) – Daily Nous
#ArizonaStateUniversity #ChatGPT #Creativity #DailyNous #GuestPost #HavePen #HumanAIHybrids #JimmyAlfonsoLicon #Laptop #ResearchProcess #UncommonWisdom #WillPublish
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The ‘Terror of War’ Authorship Conversation Should Go Far Beyond One Photo https://petapixel.com/2026/01/18/the-terror-of-war-authorship-conversation-should-go-far-beyond-one-photo/ #associatedpress #photojournalism #wordpressphoto #terrorofwar #thestringer #napalmgirl #Editorial #editorial #guestpost #stringers #Industry #industry #opinion #nickut
The Crucial Ingredient Your Story May Be Missing
If you’re hearing that your story lacks structure or impact, you might be missing the interconnected cohesion of plot, stakes, and character.
https://janefriedman.com/the-crucial-ingredient-your-story-may-be-missing/
The Struggle Is Reel: Marketing Without Social Media
Needing to build audience for a new book, one author examines her avoidance of creating video content in favor of face-to-face connections.
https://janefriedman.com/the-struggle-is-reel-marketing-without-social-media/
