The Writing Life

Tis the Season for Stories!

By Karen Ballon December 10, 2014

December has to be my favorite month of the year. I love all the preparations and decorations and celebrations for the Christmas season. But two of my favorite things about the Christmas season are the books and movies we savor every year because, for those of us in the Ball household, it just isn’t Christmas without:

Books

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. (“Hey! Unto you a child is born!”)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

Debbie Macomber’s Angels series (LOVE Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy!)

Movies

Christmas in Connecticut (the Barbara Stanwyck version)

White Christmas (I sing along, of course)

Ernest Saves Christmas (Yes, I’m serious…knowwhaddImean, Vern?)

Die Hard (Hey, it’s a Christmas movie!)

Babes in Toyland (“This is the forest of no retuuuurrrnnnn…”)

A Muppets Christmas Carol (“You may be a bit of undigested beef…”)

How about you? What books or movies to you just have to read or watch when December rolls around?

When Did You Know You Wanted to Be a Writer?

By Karen Ballon August 6, 2014

Yesterday was my birthday. 57 years of life. It struck me yet again how quickly the days goes by. I swear it was just yesterday that I was a kid, canoeing on Diamond Lake, walking my dog to the used book store to buy my Thor comics (which I collected until my senior year in high school, and which, when I sold my collection, financed my first year of college), gathering with my pseudo-cousins after …

Category: The Writing LifeTag: Career, The Writing Life

The World Rages

By Dan Balowon July 29, 2014

One hundred years ago this week, the Great War began. It was the war that was supposed to end all wars. The world decided it was about time to get all their anger out at once and then go back to living in peace. Following the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary and Serbia decided they had had enough of civility and started fighting. A world war …

Category: The Writing LifeTag: Faith, The Writing Life, Theology

Orphan Trains & Wild Stallions

By Guest Bloggeron July 28, 2014

by Allen Arnold I recently read about the unexpected publishing success of Orphan Train. It’s a novel set in present-day Maine and Depression-era Minnesota. This fifth book from Christina Baker Kline has turned out to be a sleeper hit of the year, with more than one million copies sold. I’m intrigued by the book’s premise. But it’s the subhead of the article that caught my attention. “Unlikely …

Category: Art, Guest Post, The Writing Life, TheologyTag: Art, Craft, The Writing 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

Look Up!

By Karen Ballon May 21, 2014

by Karen Ball A friend shared the video at the end of this blog with me in response to what I wrote here last week. I love the message, not just for me personally, but for anyone who seeks to touch people through their writing. Because really, how effective can we be in what we’re doing as writers if we don’t see and spend time with the people around us? We write about our “core audience” in our …

Category: Get Published, Karen, The Writing LifeTag: Audience, The Writing Life

The Writer’s Pod

By Karen Ballon April 30, 2014

When I was at the Mount Hermon Writers’ Conference a week or so ago, I went to one of my all-time favorite places: The Santa Cruz Wharf. It’s one of the best places to see the sea lions, which are draped all over the pilings of the wharf, as well as swimming and playing in the water around it. A few years ago, I saw something I’d never seen before. A group of sea lions all floating together. Come …

Category: Career, Communication, Conferences, Creativity, Karen, Platform, The Writing LifeTag: Community, Conferences, The Writing Life

Spring is Here!

By Karen Ballon February 19, 2014

A picture of a beautiful flower I took this morning in our garden.

It started two weeks ago. Little green sprouts poking up through the frozen, barren ground. Ground that, thanks to a winter of record-breaking cold, was so hard just a month ago that not even my shovel made a dent in it. So you can imagine my delight when I spotted those bits of green pushing their way through that same, dead …

Category: Career, Craft, Karen, Personal, The Writing LifeTag: Career, Spring, The Writing Life

Knowing Discouragement’s End

By Karen Ballon January 22, 2014

A guest blog by Mesu Andrews

Mark Lowry is one of my favorite comedians. I heard one of his performances many years ago, and he quoted a single, profound phrase found 457 times in the King James Bible: “It came to pass…”

That’s it. That’s all.

It came…to pass.

And then he challenged the audience to remember those words the next time they faced an impossible situation, the depths of …

Category: Book Business, Guest Post, Karen, The Writing LifeTag: Discouragement, The Writing Life

Overcome the Discouragement of Expectations

By Steve Laubeon January 15, 2014

Guest post by Erin Taylor Young

This is Henry, our dog. Not my husband.
I love my husband. Really I do. But there are occasions I’m tempted to take a sharp, pointy pencil and stab him somewhere non-fatal. Especially when I’m torqued over my anemic word count, frustrated by a recent edit, or discouraged by yet another rejection.
I’m venting why, why, WHY, and my hubby turns into a fixer. …

Category: Career, Guest Post, The Writing LifeTag: Career, Discouragement, Expectations