Career

3 Reasons Why Rejection is Good

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon August 28, 2014

I’ll be the first to admit that rejection doesn’t feel good, so how can it be good?

Well, a rejection:

…allows you to close the door and move on to the next opportunity.

…shows that the other person doesn’t share your enthusiasm enough to be your partner. Learning this allows you the freedom to find the right partner.

…may be a sign of God’s will. His plans are better than you imagined, for both you and the the other party.

If you are rejected, allow yourself a limited time to grieve. Then press on. Life is short, so don’t delay. Keep trying.

Your turn:

What thoughts can you add about rejection?

When were you, in hindsight, grateful for a rejection?

You Are Not Alone

By Karen Ballon August 27, 2014

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts about proposals. Clearly, a lot of us struggle with this side of being a writer. As I was thinking over what to write for tackling those problematic proposal elements, I rediscovered the video below, made in ’09. It was created by best-selling authors Angela Hunt, Kristin Billerbeck, Robin Lee Hatcher, and Terri Blackstock. These authors, back in ’09, had written a …

Category: Book Proposals, Career, Get Published

Mao and the Four Pests

By Dan Balowon August 26, 2014

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In the late 1950’s , Chairman Mao Zedong of China implemented the first stages of his Great Leap Forward, an effort to move China away from a predominantly agrarian society to a modern industrial and political power. One of the first parts of the GLF was the Four Pests Campaign. The Chinese government identified four scourges on their society and set out to eradicate them. They were: rats, flies, …

Category: Book Business, Career, The Publishing LifeTag: Career, The Publishing Life

Publishers are From Mercury, Authors are From Pluto

By Dan Balowon August 19, 2014

Next time someone tells you that Christianity is not as valid as science, just remind them that not many years ago, Pluto was assumed to be a planet, but in 2006 was determined not to be one, but instead was a “dwarf planet”, of which there a several dozen in our solar system alone. If you took a test in grade school and answered, “How many planets are there in our solar system” with the number …

Category: Book Business, Career, Communication, The Publishing LifeTag: Authors, Book Business, publishers, The Publishing Life

8 Things Authors Should No Longer Ask Their Publisher

By Dan Balowon August 12, 2014

Publishing is changing faster than ever before. Book publishers have been wrenching to find new business models that make them more flexible, efficient and adaptable to the realities of the digital publishing age. Within this fast-change world, another group who has felt the pain of shifting tectonic plates are authors who have been around publishing for ten or more years. Some issues that used …

Category: Book Business, CareerTag: Book Business, Career, publishing

The Morals of the Story

By Karen Ballon July 30, 2014

As promised, here are the morals—and names—of the story of our young writer from last week. If you missed the post, please go back and read it. The young writer? None other than the gifted Lori Benton. Her second novel, The Pursuit of Tameson Littlejohn, released in April 2014. The first editor, who read her story from far, far away, and then became friends with Lori? Yours truly. But Lori isn’t …

Category: Awards, Career, Conferences, Creativity, Get Published, Writing CraftTag: Career, Get Published, Writing Craft

One Author’s Journey: A Tale of Publishing

By Karen Ballon July 23, 2014

With all this talk of publishing and where it’s been and where it’s going, I thought I’d tell you a story. One that happened not years ago, in the much ballyhooed Golden Age, but recently. So gather round, settle in, and listen… Once upon a time, there was a young girl who wanted to write, who grew up to be a young woman who did write, creating stories she loved. Stories that made her heart soar. …

Category: Career, Conferences, Creativity, Get Published, Writing CraftTag: Get Published, perseverance, Writing Craft

A Matter of Experience

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon June 19, 2014

Sometimes I’ll have one of those days where I’m minding my own business, when I pick up the phone to discover the author on the other end of the line is irate. (No, this is not a rerun of an article from the 20th century. I do still have a land line for my office). “Ohhh, Tamela! I know that Hell is indeed located on Earth and where is it? It’s at my publisher’s …

Category: Book Business, Career, Communication, Tamela, The Publishing LifeTag: Book Business, Career, publishing, The Publishing Life

My Secret Writer’s Tool

By Karen Ballon June 18, 2014

Guest post by Jennifer Sienes Jennifer Sienes, one of Karen’s clients, is a talented fiction writer who according to editors has a gift for bringing out the emotional power of the scene. She was recently named as a finalist in the 2014 Genesis contest with her novel Redemption. You can find out more and read her blog at www.jennifersienes.com I’ve been reading the Steve Laube Agency …

Category: Career, Guest Post, The Writing LifeTag: Spouses, The Writing Life, Writing tools

And the Winner is…ME!

By Dan Balowon June 3, 2014

Once upon a time, a man set out on the ocean in a small boat for a three-hour tour. The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed, if not for the courage of the fearless crew (of one) the boat would have been lost. The boat landed on an uncharted island and the man was stranded, but alive. Twenty years later, a larger ship happened upon the island and noticed a beautifully built …

Category: Career, Communication, Dan, Personal, TheologyTag: Career, Communication