Writing tips Two disciplines make for a whole life. If you want to write about spirituality, then prepare always to practice double disciplines. One discipline is the craft of writing; the other discipline is the intentional practice of spirituality.…
Writing tips The Understated Opening Sometimes when emotions are hot and debates are combative, trying to yell even louder won’t work. Doing the opposite can make people listen. Sometimes, if you whisper, people will strain…
Writing tips Read, Learn, Write, Revise: 10 Assignments for the First-Time or Aspiring Author by Jevon Bolden https://www.jevonbolden.com/blog/2021/7/7/read-learn-write-revise-10-assignments-for-the-first-time-or-aspiring-author
Marketing tips, Writing tips Commonplacing Scholars, amateur scientists, aspiring men of letters - just about anyone with intellectual ambition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was likely to keep a commonplace book. The great minds…
Writing tips What Authenticity Is and Why It Matters People who work in communications, such as television or book publishing, now say that authenticity is the new authority or authenticity is the new cool. It’s a shame that the…
Marketing tips, Publishing tips, Writing tips Will I Let My Age Limit My Stage? by Patricia Raybon https://www.incourage.me/2021/08/will-i-let-age-limit-my-stage.html
Marketing tips, Writing tips It makes a difference where and when we grew up Malcolm Gladwell brings the Matthew Effect to popular attention in his book Outliers, which I warmly recommend. Gladwell blows apart the fanciful notion of rags-to-riches success. “People don’t rise from…
Marketing tips, Writing tips Breakthroughs usually take time to develop The snap judgments of intuition - as powerful as they can be - are rarities in the history of world-changing ideas. Most hunches that turn into important innovations unfold over…
Writing tips How to Make Your Story a Story for Others Around my workplace, we often refer to our mission as “people for others.” St. Ignatius and his companions formed the Society of Jesus for the purpose of “helping souls.” Helping…
Writing tips Creative Writing as a Spiritual Practice by Debbie Bronkema I say these words, and whatever room I’m in, I see a light go on in somebody’s eyes. There are stories in us that are too… 1 Comment
Writing tips Memoir’s Small Frame Memoir revolves in an orbit of its own choosing, and therefore its pieces are often unified by a theme or period of time. The material is always the author’s life,…
Writing tips Understand the Difference between Personal and Public Writing I’ve lost track of all the manuscripts that have come to my editorial desk from people who survived tragedy, who processed the experience through writing, and who then came…
Marketing tips, Publishing tips, Writing tips Both environments are dense, liquid networks A metropolis shares one key characteristic with the Web: both environments are dense, liquid networks where information easily flows along multiple unpredictable paths. Those interconnections nurture great ideas, because most…
Writing tips The Dramatic Opening If you’ve got a dramatic story to tell, don’t shy away from it. The French had collapsed. The Dutch had been overwhelmed. The Belgians had surrendered. The British army, trapped,…
Marketing tips, Publishing tips, Writing tips The Principle of Cumulative Advantage The Principle of Cumulative Advantage states that once a person gains a small advantage over others in their field, that advantage will compound over time into increasingly larger advantages. But…
Writing tips The First Five Things Every Spirituality Writer Needs to Know Having read many proposals and edited scores of manuscripts written on spirituality, I can with confidence offer five statements that are nearly always true when it comes to composing…
Writing tips The Humorous Opening It’s hard to miss when you start with something funny. I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to. Bill Byson, The Lost Continent Bryson begins his travelogue through small-town America…
Writing tips That was the progression When I was in the early stages of writing Velma Still Cooks in Leeway, I decided to spend some time in the book of Ezekiel. The issues I wanted to…
Writing tips Most good stories are mysteries It’s one thing to give voice to a story and quite another to address an audience so others can receive the story’s gifts, which bring me to the third defining…
Writing tips Spiritual writing is engaging. Because my day job for more than a decade has been editing books for a Jesuit publisher, I have become well acquainted with the principles of Ignatian spirituality. The Jesuit…
