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Blogging Tip: Increase Shares with Images that Pop

Balloons against blue sky with text: Let's Pop! Our Blog Images

Images help our blog post be noticed, and many social media sites (where our post might be shared) focus on images as well. So including an image with our post means that we’re not only capturing readers’ attention, but we’re also increasing the odds that our post will be shared. Great! But not all images are appropriate for our blog.

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May 20, 2014

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What’s the Perfect Job for Our Characters?

Employee Only sign with text: Finding the Perfect Job (for Our Characters)

If we write our story well, every aspect of the story will contribute to the overall picture and create an impression for the reader. There aren’t any unimportant details in a well-written story. And that means the careers for our characters shouldn’t be an afterthought either.

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April 29, 2014

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Blogging: Tips, Tricks, and Knowing Your Goals

Arrows pointing up with text: Blogging Tips and Tricks

As authors, we’re often told to blog, but we don’t hear as much about the nitty-gritty of how to do so. If we take the time to blog, we want to make sure our time is well spent. So let’s review some tips, tricks, and “best practices” for how to reach our goals with blogging.

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April 24, 2014

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How to Organize Our Writing Research & Notes — Guest: Jenny Hansen

OneNote logo with text: A Writer's Secret Weapon: OneNote

Today’s post continues the “secret weapon” theme from Tuesday’s post, but this time we’re going to talk about issues related to our writing. And this time, the secret weapon is Microsoft’s OneNote. Researching character or location pictures? Use OneNote. Want to capture the most useful tips on a blog post? […]

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March 27, 2014

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Fix Showing vs. Telling with Macros & Word Lists

Laser light show with text: Secret Weapons for Show vs. Tell

Many writers will search in MS Word for red flag words that indicate telling. But there are a lot of those words, and that would be a lot of searches. That’s where macros can help, and today we’ll learn how to build our own trouble-searching macros with a few secret weapons.

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March 25, 2014

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MS Word Trick: Using Macros to Edit and Polish

Tarnished silver tea set with text: Need a Polish? Editing with Macros

We want to clean up our story the best we can because copy editors often charge a “messy manuscript” premium. Yet it can be difficult to self-edit at this “polish” stage. For one thing, this step can be tedious to the extreme. Even with MS Word’s “find and replace” functionality, there are many words to check, and it’s hard to remember them all.

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March 18, 2014

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Websites, Beat Sheets, and Lost Pants—Oh My!

Chewed pencil on a keyboard with text: The Struggle for Balance

I’ve been there, struggling in the same way we all do. My life is a constant balancing act between family and all my (many) various work projects. Between that common understanding and my epic, mini-ebook-length workshop handouts, my workshops are popular.

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March 11, 2014

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A Newbie’s Guide to Self-Publishing — Guest: Julie Musil

Picture of Julie Musil with text: A Newbie Guide to Self-Publishing with Julie Musil

More writers are considering self-publishing than ever before. Even traditionally published authors who love their publishers are taking the step to become hybrid authors—a mix of New York and self-published—as they release related novellas or new series on their own. Yet the prospect of self-publishing can be overwhelming. Self-published authors have to […]

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February 6, 2014

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In Defense of Pantsing

Iron fence with pointed finials with text: In Defense of Pantsing

Too much writing advice assumes that pantsers can’t succeed. But trust me, we can, and the pantsing method is not the cause of any problems.

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January 30, 2014

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