My week was all planned out. I knew what my priorities were, I had blocked off time for a project that needed sustained attention, and I was feeling pretty good about how mapped out my week was. Then it all went south. An agent offered a phone call with an
Here’s the thing about a table of contents: it’s a marketing device. Yes, it serves the practical function of letting readers know what’s in your book. But it is also one of the first pieces after the cover and back cover that readers peruse before either making a purchase or
“A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing,” said American psychologist and philosopher William James. Whether you agree or not, research from Northwestern University suggests humor can lead to creative insight. Benedict Carey, a science reporter for The New York Times, profiled the work of Northwestern neuroscientists. “In their humor
My dad has a friend named Irv. Irv’s lifelong passion is working on cars, and I’m not talking about classic roadsters or sexy sports cars. The beater everyone else has given up on is more Irv’s speed. He relishes showing the world he can get another 30,000 miles out of
Take two breaths. I’m going to show you where one of them comes from. It all starts (and ends) with phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are single-cell organisms that float throughout our planet’s oceans. Billions of them. And they have a nemesis: viruses. Here’s what happens. Viruses try to batter their way through
The best writing is naked writing—vulnerable writing, writing that draws from your own experience, directly or indirectly. Any other kind of writing is phony, and readers can smell it a mile away. Would you trust a yoga instructor who told you what to do without doing it herself? Would you
Steven Pressfield, author of the powerful kick-in-your-pants The War of Art, believes in two powerful voices in the world: A negative, dark voice that will stop at nothing to keep you from doing the things you believe are most worth doing. Pressfield calls this the Resistance. This voice is absolutely
Several weeks back I attended the International Christian Retail Show, which is the main annual event for Christian booksellers and related vendors. I’ve attended this show the past several years because it’s a good place to meet with industry friends, authors, and literary agents. One afternoon my editorial colleagues and
A couple of years ago I decided to change the combination ceiling fan/light fixture in our kitchen. Normally this is a mundane task at best. Honestly I don’t much enjoy doing household repair work, and I’m not particularly gifted at it, either. When I take on a project like this,
Pleased as all get out to be a guest blogger at Rachelle Gardner’s blog today. The post: 13 Ways to Write with Urgency. Hope to see you over there!
In 1977 NASA launched two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Their primary mission was to collect data in interstellar space, but they had enough power to continue on to the end of our solar system. Now, 35 years later, they appear to be getting very close. When they escape,
I’ve been helping authors write for nearly fifteen years, and I have found one idea in particular has helped them to take their writing to the next level. It’s not original to me; it comes from Sol Stein and his book Stein on Writing, which I highly recommend to anyone