by Anne Mateer The holiday season is upon us. For some writers, the interrupted normalcy means more writing time. But I suspect the opposite is the case for many of us: the holidays mean less time to write. Perhaps your children have vacation from school and require more supervision. Or they’re home from college (like mine will be) and you …
Thoughts on Being Adopted
by Mary Ellis Turn on a made-for-TV movie or one of those “reality” shows about adoption and you’ll find adult children in serious angst over being given up. Everyone seems to be frantically searching for natural mothers and birth siblings. Invariably during the program’s second segment, after the commercial break, the viewer meets the long-suffering mother. Apparently she never stopped …
Where Do Storytellers Come From?
by Dana Mentink Writers are storytellers. Most will tell you something along the lines of “Oh I’ve been jotting down stories since I was a kid!” Guilty. When I wasn’t jotting them, I was thinking about them (most likely during a math lesson.) Somewhere in my formative years, the seed was planted deep, sprouting into a jungle of stories. So …
Top 10 Ways to Fail Spectacularly with Social Networking
By Edie Melson This past year, everywhere you turned someone was offering help on how to succeed with marketing, aka social media. Today I’m going to turn the tables and give you my top 10 ways to fail spectacularly with social networking. 10. Never follow anyone back when they follow you. Why would you? They aren’t nearly as interesting. 9. …
George Washington Today
by Stan Crader Merry Christmas. My goal in writing is to cause readers to think beyond the story. I try to achieve two completely separate goals. First I want the reader to relate to the story and for the characters to remind them of someone in their life. And second, I include as a part of the story something historically …
Duck, Duck, Goose: A Wee Bit of Encouragement
By Tamara D. Fickas “Duck, duck, duck…” Her back rigid, the little blond girl stared straight ahead, lips stretched thin. Each time It came near, her eyes shone with hope. Each time the tap came with a duck her head dropped a little further. Would she ever get to be goose? Do you remember the game Duck, Duck, Goose from …
The Timeline of a Novelist’s Career
by Cynthia Ruchti One word started a seismic reaction in the late 1800s. “Gold!” When gold was discovered in the Klondike region of the Yukon, 100,000 men dropped everything and headed for the area. Only 30,000 to 40,000-far fewer than half-arrived. The rest were thwarted along the journey by conditions, ill health, the terrain, difficulties, dangers, and discouragement. It’s estimated …
What Bobby Flay Taught Me About Writing
by Beth K. Vogt Bobby Flay is a celebrity chef and restaurateur. Any books he’s written are filled with mouth-watering recipes, not imaginary characters and plot twists. But as I recovered from a deadline and a migraine – Could the two be related? – I indulged in a mini-marathon of television episodes of Throwdown! with Bobby Flay. Watching Flay create …
A Christian Writer’s Prayer
by Deborah Raney I will soon celebrate the 20th anniversary of the day I wrote the first words of the first prologue of my first novel. It has been a wonderful two decades full of adventure and surprises–and adjustments. Almost ten years into my pursuit of being a “real” writer, my job as a novelist had finally begun to be …
Building Your Platform
by Laura McClellan As an as-yet-unpublished writer, most of my time and attention is focused on actually writing-trying to finish my first manuscript. I read with interest, though, the many blog posts and articles about marketing, and understand the need to build a platform that will help persuade publishers to take a chance on me as a debut novelist. Like …