Dance! So many different styles. For any age. For any culture.
Sort of like writing isn’t it? The arts are a wonderful thing to behold. Enjoy!
Wait. Is that me at the 1:31 mark?
Maybe not…
Blog
Tips for Conference Prep
Is there really a conference season? True, conferences rarely take place during the Christmas season but there seems to be a conference somewhere at any given time. And that means, authors are preparing to go to conferences all year. Here are a few perennial tips I hope you can use. Thinking about going: Do I have the funds? For a national conference you must fly to, I recommend aiming to have at …
A Writer’s Gifts
Writer’s magazines often feature suggested Christmas and Hannukah gifts for writers: fancy pens, award-winning books, writing aids, and coffee mugs sporting famous writers’ mugs. But those gifts are intended to be received by writers; what about the writer who has trouble finding gifts to give? I’m so glad you asked. The following list is intended to suggest thoughtful and meaningful gifts for …
Unnecessary Words
From my earliest days writing and communicating, I’ve needed to fit whatever I wrote or spoke into space and time required by the medium in which I was using at the moment. In electronic media, a clock runs everything. If you have 90 seconds to fill before the radio newscast, you actually have 89 seconds to make a point. Not 91 or 105 seconds…89 seconds, so the network feeds are picked up without …
Our Rapidly Changing Culture
Every year Beloit College creates a "Mindset List" which reflects the culture that the incoming Freshman class have grown up experiencing. It helps their faculty know how to relate to these incoming students. Click here for this year's Mindset List.
I download this list every year and read it with increasing wonder at the speed of our cultural changes.
The college graduating class of 2014 …
Fun Fridays – November 10, 2017
Today’s video can be seen as a visual metaphor of the writing and publishing experience. Can you tell me what is being represented?
Beyond the Hook: Character Flaws?
My husband gave me a turquoise ring I enjoy wearing. For one, the stone was unearthed from the Sleeping Beauty Mine in Arizona, which has since closed. The location seems cool to me since our agency’s corporate headquarters is located in Phoenix. And since the mine is no longer in operation, the stone possesses special cachet. But more important, my husband likes the ring and wants me to have it. …
Agents Share Their Pet Peeves
Agents are people, too. Most literary agents, that is. And, like most people, we have our highs and lows. Our problems. Our irritations. Our pet peeves. I asked my fellow agents at The Steve Laube Agency to share their pet peeves with me for the purpose of this blog post. Boy, did that open a Pandora’s box. Tamela Hancock Murray, the “ACFW agent-of-the-year” award-winning agent, agreed to come …
Six Easy Steps to Publishing Success
Success in publishing is actually quite simple. Honestly I am surprised more people aren’t more successful financially as an author. So many conference workshops are making this entire publishing thing far more complicated than it needs to be. Today, here are six fast, easy, no risk steps to being a successful author in any type of writing. We will all be shaking our heads at the end for missing …
Retail is Dead! Or is it?
You’ve read the news. This calendar year bankruptcies or total closures were announced by Toys R Us, Gymboree, Bebe, American Apparel, Guess, Rue 21, The Limited, Gander Mountain, Vitamin World, and Family Christian Stores. Sears and Kmart announced last Friday that they were closing another 63 stores in January, on top of the 358 they closed already this year. And the watchful vultures are …