Earlier this year I coached Gary Neal Hansen through the process of writing a book proposal (See here for a post that will take you to the whole series.) It was a great experience. As a way to wrap things up, I asked Gary to write a guest post on
In the children’s book The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats a boy walks through his neighborhood after a snowfall and discovers the beauty there. At one point he breaks a branch from a tree and continues walking in the snow. Soon he looks back and observes his footsteps along with
Earlier this year I coached author and professor Gary Neal Hansen through the process of writing a book proposal. We covered every element of a typical nonfiction book proposal except the writing sample. This post will cover the writing sample. (To read the rest of the series, visit here.) Gary
My wife had always wanted to visit Switzerland. When her elementary school teacher asked her to do a research project, Switzerland was her subject. She was a fan of the book Heidi, which was set in the Swiss Alps. When she visited Lake Placid, New York, she loved to wander
Email, for all its benefits, is the scourge of our age. What began as a handy way to communicate has become a relentless slave driver. Who hasn’t arrived at one’s workstation ready to make solid progress on something that really matters only to find oneself a million hours later in
This little book could change everything for you. Do you have a passion or side project that energizes you? It could be a different job, a book idea, an art project, a blog, a business idea, a nonprofit you’d like to start. This brief manifesto uses stories and a series
Sometimes it feels like nobody’s listening,” my writer friend groaned. Can you relate? Have you ever poured your heart and soul into an article or proposal only to hear the cruel sound of silence? It’s frustrating. So we just keep slogging away, right? Well, yes, but there is a way of
Recently my six-year-old son won a slinky from Chuck E. Cheese. It wasn’t long before we tried to do what they do in the commercials. That’s right—we headed for the top of the stairs. We tried. And tried. At best the slinky walked down a step or two, then died.
I’m pleased to be guest-posting at the Accidental Creative blog today. Here’s the beginning… We’ve all been there. You show up to a meeting and it takes 15-20 minutes to get the necessary technology up and running. Or the agenda is unclear, so everybody’s spinning their wheels. Or you don’t understand your
In The 4-Hour Workweek, author Timothy Ferriss encourages readers to answer this question: If you got fired from your job tomorrow, what would you do to rescue your life from financial chaos? Sometimes reflecting on a worst-case scenario opens up whole new worlds of possibility. Job Search I suspect many
photo credit: Whistling in the Dark via photopin cc
We go and we go and we go. “Watch this,” we seem to say. “I’m fast. I move. I get it done. See?” But how much of our work comes from a deep sense of calling? How much of our activity stems from our core, our creative center? How fulfilling