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Diversity Issues: The Importance of “Own Voices”

Person passionately expressing themselves with text: Finding the Truth in Every Voice

While all diverse stories are important, the stories that should be most encouraged are those from authors who can provide an authentic perspective. Today, Wendy Sparrow shares her insights on what “own voices” means and how others can improve their non-own-voices stories.

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May 18, 2017

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What Advice Do You Ignore?

Ear plugs with text: What Advice Do You Ignore?

There’s no shortage of writing advice out there for us to learn. Some of that advice is questionable, a few tidbits are outright harmful, but most of it is decent-to-good. Yet even if advice is good, we still might want to ignore it. Yes, really.

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May 9, 2017

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The Silver Lining of Bad Reviews

Clouds with a glint of sunlight and text: Are Bad Reviews *Always* Bad News?

Whether we pursue traditional publishing or self-publishing, rejection is a given for writers. Our choice simply comes down to how we’ll handle it. Will we let rejection hold us back, or can we see it as a sign that we’re doing something right?

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May 2, 2017

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Slow Progress Is Better Than No Progress

Inchworm creeping across a book with text: Slow Progress Still Moves Forward

Due to my health issues over the past 14 months, I’ve missed a lot of self-imposed deadlines, and it’d be easy to get frustrated. But it’s important to remember that slow progress is not a failure. Slow progress is still better than nothing.

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April 27, 2017

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Author Struggles: Gaining Reviews

Scattered yellow stars with text: Reviews: Gathering Stars for Amazon

There’s no end to the struggles we face as a writer, including gathering reviews for our books. With Amazon’s algorithms, the quality, quantity, and recency of reviews can affect whether potential readers ever see our work, so it’s important to encourage reviews of our story.

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March 30, 2017

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Branding 101: Keeping Our Sanity while Building a Brand

Girl falling off a slide with text: Branding? Hang on to Your Sanity

We can’t do it all, and as Jenny Hansen mentioned recently, that includes limiting our social media platforms. It’s so easy in this business to overdo things, and that includes our branding efforts. Let’s take a look at how to find (and keep) the right balance for the sake of our sanity.

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March 23, 2017

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Writing Craft: Balancing Rules and Voice

Fist with "OBEY" printed on knuckles with text: When Can We Break the Rules?

Many aspects of writing are subjective, so we often need to discuss how to find the right balance. One element we need to balance is the rules of writing versus our writing voice. How can we know when we should break the rules for the sake of our voice?

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March 16, 2017

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