Writing tips The Greatness Myth Writers like to hold up the myth of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road as a paradigm of possibility: He wrote it in three weeks! It was perfect! It’s a great…
Writing tips Bach’s Secret Weapon from “Adorning the Dark” by Andrew Peterson I remember lying on my bed in high school with two cabinet speakers on either side of my head, listening to Pink…
Writing tips Not a Moment, But a Way of Life The Bible’s idea of carpe diem, “seize the day,” or “redeeming the time” is sharply different from the direction to which most people take the ideal—toward the selfish, the short…
Writing tips When Beginning a New Book When it is time to begin a book, when the blank pages are waiting and the fountain pens have been…
Marketing tips, Publishing tips Impossibilities? Wikipedia has taught me to believe in the impossible more often. In the past several decades I’ve had to accept other ideas that I formerly thought were impossibilities but that…
Writing tips Why Memoirs Fail Most memoirs fail because of voice. It’s not distinct enough to sound alive and compelling. Or there are staunch limits to emotional tone, so it emits a single register. Being…
Marketing tips, Publishing tips Positioning, Packaging, and the Pitch Today, in order to even have a chance at people’s attention, your project has to seem as good as or better than all the others. Three critical variables determine whether…
Writing tips Rewrite Time When the rewrite time comes, you put your gamer on. You jam the gamer down on your head and set…
Publishing tips What is the Single Best Way to Develop a Relationship with Your Publisher? - by Jana Burson ONE WORD: COMMUNICATION Just like in any relationship, be it friendship, business, marriage, etc.,…
Writing tips Your Creative Calling When you respond to your creative calling, you are doing something that is necessary for the world. It may be necessary in big ways-say a series of newspaper articles that…
Publishing tips If Something is Not Interactive, it is Broken All devices need to interact. If a thing does not interact it will be considered broken. Over the past few years I’ve been collecting stories of what it is like…
Writing tips Using Fiction to Explore Spiritual Reality by Steve McCutchan www.smccutchan.com THE BIG PICTURE Have you ever hit your thumb with a hammer? If so, you experienced a critical factor that contributes to many of the…
Writing tips Revision Is Not Editing Not to blame our English teachers—I was one—but most of our rotten assumptions about revision originated early, with a teacher’s red pen. Remember your first ventures onto the page? Chances…
Uncategorized 5 Reasons why a writer of color should certainly attend the Publishing in Color conference by Natarsha Sanders I had the opportunity to attend the Publishing in Color conference sponsored by Writing for Your Life. I chose to attend this conference because I am a…
Marketing tips, Publishing tips Planning a Launch The first thing anyone planning a launch has to do is sit down and take inventory of everything they have at their disposal that might be used to get this…
Writing tips Seek First God’s Kingdom from “Adorning the Dark” by Andrew Peterson I recently had a good, long phone conversation with a singer-songwriter about that grand old subject, Getting Started in the Music…
Writing tips Written in Blood The following meditation is from a talk on the occasion of the presentation of the Whiting Writers' awards: I WISH THAT I had told my writing students to give…
Writing tips To make the most of our time on earth If, as people commonly say today, our brief lives are simply “the dash between the two dates on our gravestones,” what hope is there of investing that brief dash with…
Writing tips The Jury of Twelve While I wandered my way through my favorite sections of my favorite bookstore one evening, a voice over the public-address…
Publishing tips How Important Are My Title and Subtitle On My Book Proposal? - by Christopher Ferebee You know the old adage, "Never judge a book by its cover." But all surveys…
