The Remembering Room is Closed: How Grief Brought Us Joy

It’s been a little over a month since The Remembering Room exhibit closed, and I’ve spent that time reflecting, writing, carrying my son close, wandering the woods and the mountains, and reminding myself that it’s time to move forward. It’s time to seek joy. It’s time to unfurl, renewed.

Here’s what I know.

Joy doesn’t come naturally to us all. It feels like a nebulous term most of the time. But when joy comes, it comes in little pieces, and those pieces are dense enough to…

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I Took 6-Months off From Social Media | Notes From the Field

At its best, social media can be an engine for restorative, even radical, change. At its worst, though, it becomes an inversion of this - a place that sucks you into a pit of comparison, into a pit of desolation and despair about a broken world you can’t fix, a forum for big business to sell you on products and lifestyles and shoulds and coulds, an echo chamber that keeps you encapsulated and your perspective shallow, a kiln for your anxiety, and when your Screen Time report shows just how many hours a day you spend looking at your phone, you realize how much social media is actually claiming a big chunk of your lifespan.

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Art is an Act of Advocacy

While I am still actively de-centering my voice from the communal conversation, sharing our stories, learning to listen to and empathize with each other’s stories, using Art as activism, and reminding yourself of the immense power you have right inside of you is a crucial piece of the cultural dialogue right now. With that, my words below are spare and to the point. Scroll the end or simply visit my last post if you are interested in engaging BIPOC entrepreneurs in the literary world.

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Black Lives Matter | Gifting Privilege Forward

Stories are our most important commodity, and I'm not the voice you should be listening to right now.


With love and in solidarity, I've closed shop for the moment. I won't be filling new client spots until things make more sense, because the system is set up in such a way that safeguards will make sure I'm okay. I can't say as much for business owners who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color.

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Resources and a Review!

When Wizards in Space Lit Mag founder and Editor-in-Chief, Olivia Dolphin, reached out...

to me for a review of issue no. 5, I was so excited! I'd been following the magazine for a little while, obsessing over their beautiful design work and spying on their fun-filled launch parties from afar. And the timing of this issue just couldn't be anymore perfect. I don't think it was the staff's intention to put out an issue so timely, but this installment has helped me process the events of COVID-19 with the sort of introspection that only literature can inspire.

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Solitude Can Be Fulfilling, Even Under Strange Circumstances

I don't want to focus on COVID-19,
but I do want to help you channel your creativity.


I won't dwell on the coronavirus and the obvious but differing effects it's having on us all. To be honest, I've had to step away from focusing on it as much as possible because my own anxieties were starting to take over a bit, so I'll just say a few things that I think might resonate with many of you, and if you want to skip the discussion, make sure you scroll to the end to take advantage of the programs I'm offering to help everyone navigate this time in a creatively fulfilling way.

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Amanda FilippelliComment
Authenticity and the Creative

It’s long been discussed across the ages that the ultimate plight of the writer is expressing their authentic meaning—creating character interiorities that are authentically representational, creating worlds that mirror the images in our heads, and creating meaning through symbology that is an authentic expression of our intent. If you’re feeling hopeful, don’t. The answer is that it’s impossible.

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Exactly How to Find an Editor + the Privilege of Having One

Do you need an editor? What do they cost? What if you can’t afford an editor? How do you find one? What should you look for? In a response to heated Tweet, I’ve answered ALL of your editing and publishing questions here!

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The Truth About Book Sales, Having Heroes, Being an Introvert, and the Haters

Learn the most important things I’ve learned along my entrepreneurial journey as a working author and writer, including how authors really make money, what to do about the haters, why being an introvert is really an advantage, and why it’s important to have heroes.

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Creation Magick

If you want to cast real magick, start living out your purpose. Creation Magick is all about harnessing your own personal power through the contemporary lens of Paganism and pop culture witchcraft. It’s about how the hedgewitch partners with the Earth in a contract to help grow and harvest life in the same way that the writer is the gardener of worlds. It’s about how the sage has divine knowledge and knows when to release and when to reserve it for the good of humankind in the same way the writer is the deus ex machina with full editorial privilege. It’s about how the oracle can predict and feel the future, manipulating the fabric of time and space in the same way that the writer has the power to warp realities. It’s about how we all have the power of divination, but we’re scared to accept the path we know is ahead of us.

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Lionfish, a Novel and a Journey

To help support your journey, I'm going to let you in to my own. I'm going to share how I got to this point, give you tips for your own process, share my query letter and pitch practice + my (numerous) rejections with you, and let you watch me live pitch a literary agent at this year's conference. 

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A Letter From Your Strong Friend

(Trigger warning: this blog contains content about depression, mental illness, and suicide.)

I’ve been struggling lately. There, I said it. And it isn’t easy to write those words down. You don’t know it, but so many moments have passed between that last sentence and this one—so many moments during which I spent grappling with an insecurity that says I should delete what I’ve started here; an insecurity that tells me there’s no real good reason to share the things I’m about to say; an insecurity that feels like a cement brick being balanced on the top of my head; an insecurity that makes my knees want to give out.

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