by Melinda Inman I didn’t want this gig. I didn’t want to write about how life is messy and complicated as we pursue our publishing dreams. Rather, I wanted to write about how the sun shone, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed, and all was right with the world. But life happened. Cancer, hospice, death, Epstein Barr, and now Chronic …
Courage for your Journey
by Cynthia Herron If you’ve been writing for any length of time, you’ve grown accustomed to hearing words like thick-skinned. Tough-as-nails. Not-for-the-fainthearted. Resilient. We may not like their connotation, but unless we approach our craft with a realistic mindset, those words can propel us forward or freeze us in our tracks. Writers on the publishing journey understand the road is …
ACFW New Releases: October 2014
October 2014 New Releases More in-depth descriptions of these books can be found on the ACFW Fiction Finder website. Amish Romance: An Amish Second Christmas by Kathleen Fuller, Tricia Goyer, Ruth Reid and Beth Wiseman — “When Christmas Comes Again” by Beth Wiseman: Katherine Zook and her four children are facing their first Christmas without a loved one, and the …
Talk Your Way Out of a Jam!
By Bonnie S. Calhoun Have you heard novelists say their story was bogged down by inactivity, or that they felt lost in a long drawn out narrative? Well never fear! I have a totally sharp solution…conversation. Write out the narrative and then make it a conversation between two or more people. That’s write (right). Dialogue is considered to be an …
Beating the Post Conference BLUES
By Susan May Warren Are you home from the ACFW conference? Finally unpacked? I hope you came home filled with encouragement and new ideas on how to make your writing breathtaking. Now what? Conferences can be overwhelming, between the requests for proposals or full manuscripts, new story ideas, craft lessons, marketing epiphanies and loads of new friends. Where and how …
Publishing vs. Encouraging
By Ane Mulligan According to a song lyric by Linda Rondeau: Home, home in the industry Where the writers and publishers play Where seldom is heard An encouraging word And the skies are so cloudy all day Thanks, Linda for letting me borrow the lyric. Yes, I’ve experienced discouragement in my writing journey. Maybe it was a rejection, or comments …
Dreams Really Do Come True!
By Lillian Duncan I wrote another post with this same title after receiving my first contract from a traditional publisher. It took 15 years of writing before I received that contract. So you can well imagine I was a little bit excited. Now three years and seven contracts later, I still get excited. I just don’t cry quite as much! …
40 Days of Prayer: Day 1
Day 1 Topic: That God’s will be accomplished at the conference Psalm 115:1–Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory. Father, we kneel before you acknowledging you as our Sovereign LORD. Before we were ever knit together in our mother’s womb, you had a plan for us and our writing. That plan included this …
Are You Being Tossed About by Every Wind?
By Henry McLaughlin Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Ephesians 4:14 NLT In my small group recently, we were discussing critiques. One member had …
40 Days of Prayer: Day 2
Day 2 Topic: Good weather for travel Luke 8:24b–And He got up and rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped, and it became calm. Our most kind and gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for today. Thank you for the chance to go to a conference to be filled with you. I am so excited that authors get …