by Sarah Sundin When I started writing, I was alone. I’d never met another novelist, and I had no idea where to start. The first and best advice I received was to join a writers group and attend conferences. Made sense. I needed to learn my craft. I needed to meet editors and agents so I could sell my book. …
Top 20 Ways Writers Spread Joy
by Cynthia Herron Now that Thanksgiving’s over and Christmas is just around the corner, writing may take a back seat as we prepare for the next big holiday. We’ll celebrate the birth of our Savior, visit with family, and of course, dine all things deelish during our Norman Rockwell picture-perfect moments. (I can hardly wait!) Still, while I adore the …
Cross Promotion and the Christian Author
By Carrie Fancett Pagels RWA’s magazine, RWR, recently featured an excellent article on marketing. One of the points they made, besides the obvious point that you must write the very best book that you can, is to link up with other authors and cross promote. As a blogger for many years, I’ve had the privilege of promoting many bestselling Christian …
Giving Thanks
by Laura McClellan This writing adventure can be lonely and discouraging. We spend a lot of time alone with the ideas and words in our minds, and we can work for months, even years, with no “success” as the world defines it. It can wear a writer down. But I’ve come to believe that much of our happiness comes from …
Beta Readers
by Katherine Reay This is a big week. Kids are getting out of school or traveling home if they are able, families are gathering, and Thanksgiving, and all the joy that comes with it, is hours away. Happy Thanksgiving, all! But we’re not here to share Turkey Bowl stories, or in my case the inevitable Turkey Trot run my family …
Platform Isn’t a Dirty Word
By Ane Mulligan Everyone hates the word platform. But stay with me here. If you’re a writer, you need one. These days, only the top 10% or less of writers have people who do all the marketing for them. Let’s face it, the rest of us have to market. And you have to have a sphere of influence to market …
Life-Generating Words
By Loretta Eidson While reading Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer, it occurred to me the irony of how well that title describes the multitude of thoughts in a writer’s mind. We enter a mental battlefield every time we sit down to write. While our thoughts press against a pliable wall of ideas, we must filter through them before …
Paralysis of Perfection
By Karen H. Richardson It happens to the experienced and the inexperienced among us. It happens when we least expect it or have time for it. We desire to put words on a page to tell a story, share an emotion, or express some great truth. We have a list of topics and an outline. We want each syllable to …
Bringing Characters to Life
By Henry McLaughlin A story without people is not a story. I’m not sure what it is but it’s not a story. You can have a great plot and beautiful settings, but if your characters are not alive, you just have words on a page. There are numerous tools available to help us create characters. Meyer-Briggs, Gary Chapman’s Five Love …
Not All Characters Are Created Equal
By Winnie Griggs The stories you write undoubtedly have casts of varying numbers, descriptions and personalities. And while every character in your manuscript works together to tell your story, they each perform a different function depending on the roles you assign them. In fiction there are four tiers of characters. These are: • Primary Characters • Secondary Characters • Bit …