WRITER
STORYTELLER
TEACHER
Julie Hartley
Welcome to my website! I’m a novelist, poet, creative writing teacher, editor, retreat leader, storyteller, and parrot owner. Here, you’ll find details of my books: a middle grade novel called The Finding Place, a collection of poetry bizarrely entitled Deboning a Dragon, and a guide for teachers who want to instil in their students a lifelong love of Shakespeare. You’ll also find information here about my annual creative writing retreats in Mexico and Costa Rica, and my creative writing classes for adults and teens. Check out my blog, too, for writing prompts and techniques, tales of travel and musings on a creative life. Oh – and there are a few stories about the parrot, too.
Advice for Writers, from William Faulkner…
One: “Don’t be ‘a writer’ but instead be writing. Being ‘a writer’ means being stagnant. The act of writing shows movement, activity, life. When you stop moving, you’re dead. It’s never too soon to start writing, as soon as you learn [...]
Five Lessons Novelists can Learn from Screenwriters
It’s common knowledge that successful screenwriters have several hard and fast rules they try to adhere to, in the hope of success. If you are starting to write a novel, there’s a great deal you can learn by exploring these rules. [...]
Elmore Leonard: 10 Rules Of Writing
Writer Elmore In July 2001, the crime fiction writer Elmore Leonard wrote a short piece for The New York Times on his ten rules for writing. This was eventually adapted into a book. I’ve shared his rules many times [...]