writing — BLOG — Amanda Filippelli

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Blue Rooms: How the Book Became a Play

Blue Rooms is the first of its kind in that it is a spoken word stage production that creatively combines the worlds of literature and poetry with theater, dance, and music. But beyond that, Blue Rooms is a movement.

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.

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.

New Year, New Vision

New Year's Resolutions Aren't For Writers

Thoughts on cycles rather than resolutions, solitude, and the art of reflection, + tips for how to be effective and smash your writing goals.