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When Sparrows Fall
A friend lost her son Sunday. A tragic accident, a hit-and-run driver, a moment that can’t be replayed, and he was gone. Just like that. All that vitality. All those years he had ahead of him. Gone. He...
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Thoughts on the Third Year
Every year when the ACFW conference rolls around, I spend a little time thinking about where I’ve been and where I’m going. It was at the ACFW conference in 2012 that Les announced he’d taken on an...
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Is Anyone Longing for the Good Old Days?
If you’ve met me at a conference you probably know that I don’t carry business cards. How odd is that? Why would an agent not carry business cards? I’m not kidding when I tell conferees I don’t have...
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Content Marketing and the Fiction Writer
I recently read an interview with Seth Godin, that made me think about the way we market. I put a couple of courses up on Udemy this year, and I have authors who have published books and who have more...
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Omniscient Versus Head Hopping
I’m getting a bunch of good questions from a Facebook page I recently put up for my Udemy students. So, YAY! This is going to help me get some blogging done, I think. Recently, I was asked how to tell...
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A Rant
I am sure you all get tired of agents ranting about how busy they are. Agents, after all, are not busier than other people. All of our technology, which makes things faster and easier in some ways, has...
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Sentence Variation ~ or How to Keep Your Readers from Falling Asleep on a...
I taught a three-hour intensive on narrative voice at my regional SCBWI conference a couple of weeks ago. Had a great time. Spring Mingle is always good, and, as usual, there was a lot of fun mixed in...
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ʎsɐǝ ʇ,uıɐ ʇı
Ereh’s a yppah )ton( tsop rof uoy no Lirpa Loof’s Yad. Ti’s ton a ekoj, yletanutrofnu. Tub ti tlef thgir ot tsop ti yadot. Ylno 04 Fles-dehsilbup srohtua era a sseccus, syas Nozama Gnikam yenom gnitirw...
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Description Shows Instead of Telling
I love description. Give me some great metaphors and similes. Paint rich settings. Let me see the heat waves radiating off the asphalt, let me smell the rust and the dust and the summer sun beating...
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Backstory
A word about backstory. Or 700 words about it. Several weeks back in my Novel Writing Courses Facebook group the subject came up. One evil writer was encouraging another writer to put in lots of...
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Closing to Queries
I have, for the last couple of years, been operating under the delusion that “one of these days,” I’m going to have more time. More time to write, more time to clean my house, more time to read,...
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Description: Following a Logical Progression
There is such a thing as too much description, but some scenery is necessary. You don’t want to micromanage your readers by reporting on the smallest details, so nothing is left to their imaginations,...
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Online Writing Courses
The world of online courses has exploded. LinkedIn bought Lynda a while back and today I read that Microsoft bought LinkedIn. So how is Lynda going to change, I wonder. Google owns YouTube so that’s a...
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Speaking to Strangers
Igiugig, Alaska (Pronounced Ig-ee–og’–ik) It’s a smattering of buildings and an airstrip, where the Kvichak River (Quee’jack River) comes out of Lake Illiamna. It can be reached by plane, boat, snow...
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Making Graphics and Sharing Them
I want to share some sites I like, that I don’t hear a lot about. If you blog, or post to Facebook or Twitter, some of these sites I post about here may help you out. Today I want to tell you about...
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Visualizing Success
So up there is the screenshot of my Gmail inbox. Looks good, eh? As long as we don’t click on any of thsoe pesky folders in the sidebar, all will be fine. How is it possible to have 644 emails in a...
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Long Emails
I used to always write long emails. I wanted to communicate carefully. I wanted to be clear. I wanted no misunderstandings to come back and bite me. Now? Not only do I hate writing them, but I can’t...
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Children’s Writers Conference
Just a quick post to let you know: If you’re interested in writing for children, I’m having a conference next year. It’s in September in the Atlanta area. Keynote speakers are Gary Schmidt and Kirby...
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Online Writing Courses
The world of online courses has exploded. LinkedIn bought Lynda a while back and today I read that Microsoft bought LinkedIn. So how is Lynda going to change, I wonder. Google owns YouTube so that’s a...
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Resolutions
Last January, I checked back on 2015 and I saw that I had only blogged 16 times. Yikes! I immediately made a resolution. In 2016 I’d post three times a week. I had a platform and I was wasting it. It...
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