Good Fiction is Credible Fiction So you want to write a good story? The kind of fiction that resonates with its readers; the kind that lasts longer on the shelf than the milk at your grocer; the kind that keeps people up at night like a narcotic? Well, then here’s a little advice my fifth grade teacher, Ms. Pendergast, gave me: do your homework. But you don’t like research, you say. That’s why yo...

Go With the Flow: Write With Transition Words and Phrases One of the most common weaknesses I see in day-to-day writing is poor logical flow from one idea or point to the next. This usually takes the form of a bunch of seemingly unrelated phrases thrown together with little or no sense of sequence, continuity, or relativity. Although the overall subject may be obvious, the words to describe it s...

Going The Extra Mile There is one sure way to get what you want in life, but few people actually do it. Put this practice firmly into your day to day business activities and you will have an advantage over the rest of the crowd. Successful people realize their life long dreams by doing things that most people are not willing to do. If you can just do what is needed instead of what you want to do...

Glossary of Children’s Writing Terms ADVANCE: money paid to author by publisher once book is under contract. ½ of advance is generally paid upon signing of the contract, ½ upon delivery of final manuscript. Advances are paid against future royalties (see below), so the author won’t receive any additional payments until the royalty earnings have surpassed the amount of the advance. BACKLIST: book...

Ghostwriting for Fun and Profit We’ve all heard of ghostwriters. For some, a ghostwriter is the ghostly assistant to junior detectives on a PBS kids’ show. For most, however, a ghostwriter is someone who writes for another, in the name of another. Many celebrities use a ghostwriter in their forays into writing. Probably the most-noted ghostwriting project would have to be the books by V.C. Andre...

Ghostwriting – Making Money by Being Invisible My bookcase take up one whole wall in the family room, from floor to ceiling. It shows my eclectic reading tastes… fiction, non-fiction, Harry Potter next to murder mysteries and metaphysical literature. Also there are books I’ve written for the business sector – on negotiation, writing letters, communication skills, real estate sales and a lot more....

Getting Your Short Fiction Published: The Hard Truth The short story market is one of the hardest to break into. There are thousands of well-known writers pumping out short fiction, and thousands more just like you, struggling to get themselves published for the first time. But there are several things you can do to set yourself apart from the rest and start working your way to the head of the p...

Getting Started in Column Writing You’ve written many articles for Websites, newsletters and now you’ve even conquered the territory of getting published in a magazine. What’s the next step, you ask? How to I make the editor ask for my work weekly or monthly? Enter: the column. Before you march up to an editor’s office or send her unsolicited mail asking to write regularly for a publication, le...

Getting Motivated By A Motivational Speaker? In the past years, there has been a sudden rise of motivational speakers. They appear in television and in magazines as well as sold out seminars that are just brimming with people who are just craving to get some direction with their lives. A motivational speaker, instead of focusing on the financial gains that he or she will most probably get from t...