About Me
Mary Alyce finished graduate school at the University of St Andrews right before the pandemic hit. Prior to graduate school, she worked at a literary agency after graduating from the Columbia Publishing Course. Before landing in book publishing, she worked in the film and television industry in Los Angeles at a television network and she interned at The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the body that puts on the Emmy Awards. Mary Alyce holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Writing and Film Studies from DePauw University; she also studied abroad at the University of Oxford for two semesters. She is a voracious reader who particularly enjoys young adult fantasy. In her free time, Mary Alyce watches dark comedies and dabbles in cooking.
How My Journey as a Writer Began
Mary Alyce wrote (well, dictated) her first book when she was four years old, and she hasn’t stopped writing since. A lifelong love of ‘playing pretend’ drove her to carve out a life for herself in the storytelling business. This has taken her from California to Scotland—and everywhere in between.
Today, Mary Alyce continues to hone her craft by attending writing workshops, reading a lot, and writing a lot. During the pandemic, she has attended virtual writing retreats and virtual write-ins with friends.
Finding a writing community is one of the key ways to have fun while drafting a novel. For writers interested in learning more about how to do this, check out the blog! Also, feel free to reach out to Mary Alyce on Instagram. She is always on the lookout for new writer friends.
Another key factor when it comes to having fun while writing a novel is crafting a plot and characters that are, well, fun to write. This is important because, very often, the manuscripts that are fun to read—which are consequentially the manuscripts that get offers of representation—are the manuscripts that were fun for the author to write.
This doesn’t mean that writing is always fun (it isn’t) or that you’re doing something wrong if you want to pull your hair out (even Stephen King threw his manuscript of Carrie into the trash out of frustration). A novel that is fun to write is one that excites the author’s writerly soul. It is a story idea that has something about it that feeds your scribbler heart. Maybe it has a plot you’re particularly excited about. Maybe there are characters who have such great chemistry together that their dialogue writes itself. Or maybe it’s something else—the possibilities are endless. To learn more about how to craft a story that is fun to write, check out the Story Development series on the blog.
When Mary Alyce isn’t writing, she is dreaming about her next trip to Europe and experimenting in the kitchen. She lives with a black cat whose favorite trick is to delete things she’s just written by standing on her keyboard
Why Listen to Me?
My entire professional life has been spent in the storytelling business, from a television network in Los Angeles to a literary agency in Chicago, and now I want to share what I’ve learned with other writers on the beginning of their journeys. (Writers, check out the free resources on my blog!)
I also want to help others write fun books.
And the best way to do that is to a) write the best book you can, and b) have fun while doing it.
So that’s what this website is for: helping other writers achieve their dreams by both providing free resources to assist their journeys and by sharing what I’ve learned about writing over the years, all while documenting my own journey to publication. This is a crazy roller coaster we’ve found ourselves on, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun during the ride.
