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Career Planning for Writers

Branding and goal planning. Sample topics: deciding on your goals and priorities, branding issues, entrepreneurship, platform building and ownership, series vs. stand-alone stories, etc.

NaNo Wrap-up, Part 2: Can Slow Writers Win Too?

Giant tortoise with text: Can "Slow" Writers Win Too?

Whether we officially “won” NaNoWriMo or not, most of us who participated probably racked up higher than normal daily word counts. And building on my previous NaNo wrap-up post, that success can carry over into other areas of our writing life. Author Roni Loren and I have talked several times about our “slow” writing […]

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December 6, 2012

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NaNo Check-In: Lessons from the Halfway Point

Image of Jami Gold's "My Month" NaNo calendar

Today, November 15th, marks the halfway point for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month—write a 50K word novel during November). That means all NaNo participants should reach 25,000 words on their NaNo project by midnight tonight. Yikes! That sounds like a big number—and it is—but I passed that milestone on November 11th. […]

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November 15, 2012

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Series vs. Stand-Alone: What Should We Work on Next?

New leaves branching from a twig with text: Should We "Branch Out" with Our Writing?

Whenever we finish a writing project, we’re told the best way to keep moving forward, especially when we’re dealing with querying/submitting nerves, is to start another project. But that brings up the question: What should that next project be? Should we write a follow up to that previous book? Or […]

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November 13, 2012

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Goodbye, Feedburner! Hello, Ownership of Our Platform

Picture of Keys with text "Do You Own All the Pieces of Your Blog"

Months ago, I wrote about the death of Google Friend Connect (GFC). Many people who used the GFC social media and feed reading service couldn’t believe that Google would drop a service used by so many. When it died, people lost blog readers and newsletter subscribers. Rumors are swirling that Google […]

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October 2, 2012

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Bookstores vs. Backlist: A New Decision

Drawing of ladder reaching a summit with a question mark, text: Bookstore vs. Backlist

Several weeks ago, we discussed why authors shouldn’t worry about the ebook versus print debate but should instead focus on their readers’ online versus offline buying habits. Shortly after that post, I visited my local Barnes & Noble bookstore, a beautiful two-story building complete with an escalator. I love that place. But […]

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August 23, 2012

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Are You in This for the Long Haul?

Man climbing up a hill

It’s tempting to put all our effort into a big debut or breakout book.  It’s natural to want our work to make a big splash and gain attention.  We might think that if we break out, we’ll have it made. But there’s a dark side to that approach, especially if […]

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May 29, 2012

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What Are You Looking for in an Agent?

Picture of unseen person wearing a safari hat and binoculars peeking through grass

*Shh*  Be very, very quiet.  We’re hunting agents.  (Sorry, with that picture, I couldn’t resist the Bugs Bunny reference. *smile*) Many—if not most—writers want to find an agent at some point in their writing career.  Even in this age of self-publishing, writers still want agents to help them with foreign […]

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May 17, 2012

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What Stories *Won’t* You Write?

Square piece of road pavement painted with "STOP" in the middle of the woods

In my last post, we talked about voice and how we tend to write the same types of characters, premises, and themes over and over.  That’s not a bad thing.  Those stories resonate with us as writers. Similarly, there are stories we would never write.  Stories might be so against our internal grain […]

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April 17, 2012

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Do Your Stories Match Your Voice?

Opened padlock and keys

I’ve been having a great conversation with Serena Yung in the comments of one of my posts about voice from a few weeks ago, so voice has been on my mind again this week.  When I found a fantastic article by author Julie Leto about voice and how it relates to our writing, […]

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April 12, 2012

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Exploiting Our Brand: Is There a “Right” Way?

Giant can of Coke for a Coke machine

Our brand is the impression others have of us.  So we all have a brand, whether we know it or not.  Hopefully, we’re building a brand that reflects who we really are, in a way that shows us at our best (however we each define “best”). Once we have a […]

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March 29, 2012

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