I recently saw the Green Lantern movie. I know, I know. The reviews were terrible, but I often enjoy turn-brain-off movies. This fun-but-dumb superhero action flick definitely fit the bill. But the real entertainment came after the movie, as my family and I analyzed why this superhero movie failed compared to other […]
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A few weeks ago, we talked about about branding and blogging and how to create connections with others. People who feel connected to us are more likely to be willing to give our book a try or to help us promote. Connected readers might become our front lines in our […]
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If you’re a writer and on Twitter, you should know about the incomparable Elizabeth S. Craig. She shares fantastic resources for writers that she finds all over the web, like a one-woman news source. More importantly, if you’re a writer—whether you’re on Twitter or not—you should know about her Writer’s […]
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Believe it or not, I sometimes actually follow my own advice. *smile* Recently, I helped score a few contest entries, just like I recommend in my post about why all writers should volunteer to judge contests. One of the entries was—I’m afraid there’s no nice way to say this—dreadful. The […]
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My to-be-read pile is scary. Seriously scary. Like I-might-need-to-check-into-a-program-soon scary. In the past year, I’ve accumulated over 100 print books. And just since Christmas, when I received my Kindle, I’ve downloaded about 20…er, maybe 30…hmm, possibly more…Kindle books. Honestly, most of those books I got for free, either from giveaways […]
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In case you missed it, Kristen Lamb started a debate with her post yesterday—Sacred Cow-Tipping–Why Writers Blogging About Writing is Bad. A collective whine went up from the writing community. “No blogging about writing? Then what are we supposed to blog about?” *raises hand* I was right there with the crowd, […]
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When we think of pen names, we often consider the privacy or marketing aspects and assume that means using a name completely different from our real name, such as Samuel Clemens writing as Mark Twain. But they can also address the need to make our names more distinctive and Google-able.
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If someone does a Google search on our author name, will they find us? This issue comes up more frequently now as writers want to know if they should have a website and/or blog before they’re published. That’s a complicated question that doesn’t have an easy answer.
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Earlier this week, Julie Musil had a great post about how to create story endings that resonate. I almost wrote an epic comment to her post, but decided to save my wordiness for here. And I get to use one of my vacation pictures—Disney’s California Adventure theme park, get it? […]
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We’ve heard of rewriting, revising, and even re-imagining, but what does “re-envisioning” mean? I recently came across the word in a great post by Juliette Wade about how to redo a scene without rewriting. When a scene isn’t working, it’s tempting to blame the scene and get rid of it. […]
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