The following post is from Purposeful Prose’s own guest writer, Chartres Royal. We continue to enjoy every collaboration we’ve been a part of. This experiment was introduced to me as a continuation of our work on writing and technology. While this isn’t a conventional “writing and technology” piece, we’ve found that it’s important to spotlight undervalued writing tools and methods of writing we’ve relied on over time. Recently, I was having a conversation with my mother about

Dear Purposeful Prose, Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of published books and book deals come through because people go viral online or do well on fanfiction websites. I’ve also seen self-published authors get picked up by publishing houses after doing their work. How are decisions like this made and why do authors choose to go with traditional publishing houses even after building their audience? While I won’t be able to answer this question comprehensively, I will be able to

Dear Purposeful Prose, I wanted to share something I’ve been observing lately. I know that, years ago, women used to have to publish under men’s names to get taken seriously in the literary world. Additionally, there have been years worth of pen names from authors who didn’t want to get recognized. I understand that, sometimes, famous authors pivot to pen names when they’re trying new genres as well. None of that bothers me. In the age of the internet, it feels like everyone