A Letter from the Editor
by Timothy Pike

If you’re a longtime reader of Books & Buzz Magazine, you’ll know how many nuggets of wisdom you can stumble across as you peruse our virtual pages.

It is my hope that you’ll walk away from each of our issues not only a smarter person, but a better writer. So before you crack this one open, I’ve gone through all of the articles and pulled out the biggest takeaways so I could present them front and center here.

But before we dig in, literally front and center is author and journalist Steffanie Costigan, who is pictured on the cover this month. Steffanie has recently released a children’s book aimed squarely at reducing group polarization, that “echo chamber” phenomenon that makes people’s beliefs stronger and stronger over time—and also, unfortunately, more extreme.

In our interview, Steffanie lets us in on her personal life, reveals the biggest challenge she faces every day in her writing journey, and the funny (but convenient) place she penned—in the form of hieroglyphs—her very first stories.

Let’s get into it. Here are the 5 biggest takeaways from this issue that will make you a better writer:

• “Write what you know,” despite being one of the first things aspiring writers are told, is actually bad advice, according to author CC Robinson. Why? “If we only ever wrote what we knew,” she explains, “the world would only have books featuring the tortured writer as the main character. Horror upon horror.”

• If the story you’re writing is based on true events of the past, you’d have your own memory—and in some cases, news reports—to consult for any key facts that may have slipped your mind. But what if these events happened half a century ago and weren’t well documented? Dr. David Schein, bestselling author and tenured professor, reveals how he went about researching his current work-in-progress, A Cheap Education, and unearthing details that would have otherwise been lost to time.

• Can—or should—a white author write from the perspective of a person of color? CC Robinson insists it’s not only possible, but necessary. “The world needs more books featuring marginalized characters in starring roles,” Cristy says. “Books written by authors in those communities, but also books written by authors outside those communities who want to create dynamic protagonists readers will love.”

• That cooking timer in your kitchen now has another use: giving writer’s block the boot. It’s one of three effective ways author Jayna Locke has discovered that will help you unlock the floodgates whenever you sit down to write and nothing seems to come. Best of all, her methods keep working even long after your last writing session. “It can work like magic,” she says. “You may be standing in a grocery aisle and have an aha! moment.”

• For proof that obstacles and setbacks shouldn’t keep you from writing, we look to our cover author, Steffanie Costigan, for inspiration. She makes it clear that her biggest struggle, dyslexia, hasn’t held her back. Well, maybe at first. “This for a long time slowed me down as a writer,” she tells me. “I have to work so much harder than other writers. Dyslexia is just something I have learned to accept and just push through and work hard past.”

Enjoy this month’s issue of Books & Buzz Magazine, and don’t hesitate to leave a comment on any of our articles to let us know what you’ve learned from our contributors!

To your success,

Timothy Pike
Editor of Books & Buzz Magazine