Where Normal Need Not Apply
We’ve all seen the Google Friend Connect (GFC) widgets on websites and blogs we visit. Some sites have asked us to join GFC to qualify for a contest or giveaway. On our own blogs, we enjoy seeing the avatars of our readers (and the numbers of our “members” go up). […]
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“The voice didn’t grab me.” Uh-oh. Isn’t that feedback one of a writer’s worst nightmares? Voice is one of those things that feels like we either have it or we don’t. And we think we can’t easily change it because our voice is so internal to us. But all is not […]
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Recently, the Awesome-Dipped-in-Glitter (TM) Kristen Lamb pointed out that “aspiring is for pansies.” We are not aspiring writers. Aspiring: to have a plan, desire, or hope for something. Writer: a person who writes. If we put those together, that means an aspiring writer is a person who plans, desires, or hopes […]
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We’re in the middle of the Pitch Your Shorts pitch session with Entangled Publishing. If you have a 10-60K word story with strong romantic elements, check out that post for details on how to pitch to six(!) editors. During the pitch session, I’ve had to lock down comments to make sure things […]
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In my last post, I asked how much people would be willing to pay for ebooks. Most comments agreed with my thoughts: Ebooks should be less expensive than paper books because of DRM, ownership, quality, and physicality issues. What surprised me, however, was the number of people turned off by […]
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We’re all being told that we need to have a platform, that we need to grow our platform, and that we need to use our platform. Gah! Does anyone else want to throttle the word “platform” after hearing it for the fifty-bajillionth time? The word diminishes the meaning of what […]
Have you ever visited a restaurant where the food was fantastic, but the service was atrocious? I’ve known several places like that. People who love to cook might dream for years about opening their own place—and then once they do, the restaurant fails. Why? Because the skill of being a […]
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Last week turned into an interesting demonstration on the benefits of guest posts. We’ve heard the typical reasons for allowing guests or agreeing to guest post: * increased traffic * networking * and marketing. We bring in guests and hope their readers will stay at our blog for a while, […]
Those of you who follow me on Twitter might have seen me tweet quotes from spam comments posted to my blog. If so, you might have noticed I get some very “interesting” comments. It’s gotten to the point that I look forward to reading spam comments. Even more pathetically, I’m […]
Most writers have day jobs and families to take care of, so our writing time is precious. Yet the hour we had set aside for writing instead often goes to…something else. I’m no exception. I’ve spent too much “writing time” playing on Twitter or reading blog posts, etc. Sometimes I […]
