A man came to me last week because he needed help writing his book. He told me that he’s had this project on his to-do list for years, but he just couldn’t seem to get started. He’s literally been staring at the task-start writing my book-almost every day, and when he came to me, he [...]

Some writers claim they can sit down with a good idea for a novel and bash away until it’s finished. It takes an extraordinary mind to do that. Most of today’s writers will tell you that they prepare a framework, a synopsis, from which to generate their 100,000 or so words. Here’s a suggested system [...]

As writers, you and I have many people in some way responsible for our successes or failures as writers. Be aware of professional relationships that improve your writing and opportunities. Successful writers build their work on skills, hard work, study, and help from others.
Choose editors, copy editors, and other networking relationships whose abilities and [...]

Often when we are editing, we come across sentences that we can revise in several ways. When we cannot easily select a particular revision, we employ a strategy we call R & R, which stands for “Rephrase and Replace.”

Send in a sloppy, grubby manuscript and your chances of rejection are greatly increased. Send in a smart, clean, tidy manuscript and the publishers offices will ring with the cry - “Hey, here’s someone who knows how to do it properly! Break out the Champaign! Bring on the dancing girls!’ But maybe not the latter [...]

“Sooner or later, all of us must see that negative feelings toward another person is like tossing dust at him while the wind blows against us. It all comes back.”
–Vernon Howard, Psycho-Pictography
Negative emotions, such as anger, blame, resentment, misery, jealousy, hurt, guilt, shame, and anxiety, often come from thoughts we are [...]

The candidates are actually talking about themselves and not about their opponents. They are telling the American public what they intend to do, if elected. They are talking like they have an actual platform. What is going on with that?

Have you ever been in a boring meeting and start drawing on the margins of your notepad? What about in a class or while talking on the phone? We all do it, but do we know why? Do they mean something?
WHAT IS IT?
Doodling is an absent minded scribble or marks without aim, purpose or thought. [...]

We grew up in the 1940’s and ‘50’s on a small dairy and chicken farm in Belfast, Maine. ‘We’ being my two brothers and three cousins. Times there were hard. Farming in those days, as I suspect it is now, was an austere life. Lots of hard work with little compensation. I think the people [...]

Most stories we write take place over a period of time. That time may be very short - even a few minutes; or long - over several years or generations or anywhere in between. But whatever it is, the reader needs to have a clear sense of how time is moving throughout the narrative.
Place your [...]