Ten years ago, I helped eighty-something-year-old Fanchon Blake write her memoir Busting the Brass Ceiling. Regrettably, we were never able to find a traditional publisher for the book, even with a foreword written by bestselling writer Joseph Wambaugh, known for his...
Ten years ago, I published a blog post titled "Why Hire a Writing Coach." Having just re-read it for the first time in a decade, I was pleased to discover that I still like it and that I still think that it almost perfectly explains how helpful a book coach can be....
"That's it," I decided at the start of this year. "Book promotion is critical. So this is the year I figure out how to market and advertise books." I wasn't talking about media releases or even book trailers. My team and I know how to work with those. I wanted to...
Barbara Hinske thought she was done. She just needed a copy edit, she figured. In her search for a copy editor, her manuscript fell into my hands. I was quickly drawn to a minor, undeveloped character in the novel—a bad guy with a penchant for rescuing dogs. Weaving...
Are you more comfortable coming up with your character or your plot when you're thinking about writing a novel? I'm betting that one is more natural than the other. But a novel absolutely, positively needs to be strong in both character and plot. A character-heavy...
If you’re writing fiction, you need to make sure that your work is populated by multi-dimensional characters who seem like real people. So ask yourself: Are the characters I've invented believable? Have I fleshed them out? Do they have the kinds of inconsistencies,...
How's that focus on writing coming? And how's that working for you? Here's the deal. You've suddenly got time to write. It didn't come exactly how you envisioned. You didn't win the lottery. No one announced that they would fund your endeavors because the world needed...
"Show don't tell" rolls off the tongue so easily. Showing what happens in your book rather than talking about it, however, just isn't as simple as it sounds. It takes a while to make the shift and start experiencing your book in a way that allows you to share those...
Tracia Larimer isn't your ordinary mortgage broker. So when this creative, never-take-no-for-an-answer broker wanted to spread the word about her business, she decided to write a slim book that would answer a lot of her clients' questions and help guide them through...
As a youngster, my lovely English Cocker Hoover loved to play fetch. Without waiting to see which way you were going to throw the ball, he would launch himself in whatever direction made sense to him and run as fast as he could. When he'd gone what he deemed to be the...
