Carol, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally? “The creative adult is the child who survived,” said author Ursula K. Le Guin. This has been a guiding light for my artistic evolution. As a writer, I’m obsessed with how artifacts, images, and language hoarded in family systems reveal—and hold the potential to heal—generational […]

As a young writer, I assumed everyone had a process similar to my own. It was only in an MFA that it dawned on me most writers do not work the way I do. This distinction increased starkly once outside an academic environment. Bestselling guides advocated following concrete rules, and, above all, chasing market trends. Community critique groups […]

Scottsdale author and editor Carol Test talks rejection, inspiration, and the writing life with VoyagePhoenix. Read about her current projects and learn more about The Writing Cycle’s services in this week’s Trailblazer series. “I love helping authors find their voice and connect with larger questions about the human experience their writing explores. After all, the world doesn’t […]

Can you make a living as a writer? Is writing worth the time and effort if we can’t make money from our creative endeavors? Am I even a “real writer” if I don’t make a living from my writing? The Writing Cycle’s upcoming coaching series explores the anxiety that arises when the need for market value collides with personal motivations for making art. This […]

For more than three decades, The Artist’s Way author Julia Cameron has been offering compassionate insight on the challenges of creativity. Her tools help writers overcome writer’s block by exploring how fear manifests as procrastination, the relationship between creativity and the unconscious, and by helping authors design not merely a “writing career”, but a creative life. The Writing Cycle has selected Cameron’s ten most resonant quotes […]

Nowhere do the differences between Sensing and Intuitive personalities show up as clearly as in how each prefers to use language. Since style of communication is considered one of the most significant of human differences, it’s worth examining how this component of personality affects the way we write, and to learn how to write a […]

Making something from nothing is one of the most challenging endeavors humans engage in. After all, creative efforts are rife with uncertainty; outcomes can rarely be assured. So, how, then, do we sustain momentum on long, iffy projects? One answer is to look to those who have succeeded – and note how their advice reflects a reverence for purpose, […]

Remodel your novel with Carol Test at ASU’s Piper Writers Studio this October. Ready to polish more than just your book’s opening? Remodel 5 Key Scenes within any novel or short story manuscript in a four-week fiction intensive for writers ready to turn works-in-progress into books with polish. This dynamic mix of presentation, take-home tools, and in-class workshopping […]

Carol Test presents to The Scottsdale Society of Women Writers at their Tenth Anniversary Celebration. All artists experience times when they yearn to create yet find themselves unable. But from a scientific standpoint, why might accessing creativity be harder for writers? Recent studies in neuroscience suggest the tools and rituals surrounding writing do not, in themselves, evoke the brain state […]

Are you giving editors a reason to stop reading? Before submitting to literary magazines, ensure your manuscript doesn’t contain these common errors. As a fiction writer, I’ve felt the sting of rejection more than I’d like to admit. It can take years to craft a story that resonates with readers. After all that effort, wouldn’t it be […]