Helping to Change the World…Word by Word
The Steve Laube Agency
Helping to Change the World Word by Word
Too cool. Playing a piano and a cello on the Great Wall of China!
The music is a combination of the song “Oogway Ascends” from the “Kung Fu Panda” film soundtrack and Frederick Chopin’s Prelude Op. 28 No. 20 in C minor. (The music really builds starting at the 1:07 mark.)
Creative genius.
[I apologize in advance for any ads that may pop up. I cannot control how YouTube monetizes these things.]
I've been intrigued by some blogs and articles about how Facebook makes people depressed because everyone else's lives seem so perfect. I hope that no one thinks the sum of my life is reflected in two recent Facebook posts that my uncle killed a bear on our family farm in Southern Virginia and here in Northern Virginia, we are host a family of walking stick bugs. I took great comfort in the …
You've heard it before: “Writing is a solitary endeavor.” Yes, that’s true. The responsibility for getting the words on the page rests on the writer’s shoulders. And yet, we don’t have to be Lone Rangers. In fact, if you think about it, the Lone Ranger wasn't alone! He had Tonto. And a whole network of sheriffs and people that he’d helped, all of whom supported and were rooting for him.
Anyone …
I am taking a big risk here, knowing there are authors and avid book readers looking at this post.
Columbia University Press polled hundreds of editors, writers, booksellers, librarians, literary critics, and general readers in order to produce a list of the ten most boring books of all time among the great classics. The winners were:
Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan
Faust, Goethe
Don …
On Sunday our pastor's sermon was on 1 Corinthians 12:12-27. Although in this passage, St. Paul writes about how each person is a special part of the body of Christ, with a comparison to how all the parts of the human body work together, I couldn't help but think of how essential we all are to the publishing process:
Writers: Without authors' creativity and courage, no one would have a book to …
Guest blog by Stephanie Grace Whitson
Writing is the oddest profession in the universe. Why? Because whether or not I get to keep doing it (in the traditional, royalty-paying part of the world I inhabit) has nothing to do with whether or not I’m good at it. Why? Because the one thing that reigns over my career is sales numbers, and I can’t affect sales enough to impress publishers (i.e., by …
Since most readers of this blog are writers, this might just ruin your day.
A company called Narrative Science started as a research project with Northwestern University computer science and journalism students. (The Medill School of Journalism is arguably the best in the country) It was called StatsMonkey.
StatsMonkey was a computer program that automatically generated a usable text recap …
What if you developed a great hobby you really loved? Say, baking cakes. You bake a creative cake for your child's birthday party, and everyone oohs and ahhs. Then you bake another fabulous cake for your husband's birthday. More oohing and ahhing. And so on. Until a party guest says, "Hey, you could make real money doing this. I'll be your first customer."
You agree. You bake the cake and buy a …
As many of you know, I've recently returned home from a series of writers’ conferences. As I met with writers and read their proposals or sample chapters, one thing struck me over and over…
More and more writers are spending time writing what they think agents and editors want to see.
Is that bad? Well, yes and no.
No, because you need to understand what editors and agents are looking …
