Faith and Destiny Destiny knew that she had a great calling to fulfill.  She had agreed to take on a spiritual assignment that would bring love and joy to her little corner of the world.  However, her inner critic was loud and persistent.  She did not believe that she was capable of accomplishing that which she was meant to do.  Even after years of spiritual lessons and tutoring from the angels t...

Expand Your Creativity: Stop Thinking! Want a fast way to get creative? Stop thinking! Most of what we call “thinking” is simply labeling. We’re repeating old tapes in our head. This type of thinking is not creative, and there’s no way to access our true creativity from this mindset. Like most adults, you probably lost the skill of dropping into a creative mindset at around eight years old. It’s...

Everyone Loves a Good Story! Everyone, no matter what age, loves a good story. And stories have been around as long as humans could communicate with each other. Our great books of wisdom are filled with stories. It is the stories we remember and internalize. A well told story makes a party worth attending, a speech worth remembering, and a class worth taking. During the past quarter of a century...

Eliminating Passive Writing Passive Writing is common pitfall, one so insidious that it even pops up in the writing of very experienced authors from time to time. It can sap the life and energy out of the most exciting story. I’ve read entire manuscripts written in passive sentences, which make the story sound like it’s about to start, but never takes off. Passive writing tells rather than shows...

Eliminating Lazy Writing The children’s book market is highly competitive. In order to make your manuscript rise above the rest, you not only need an enticing story and vivid characters, but your prose must be solid and fresh. Say exactly what you mean, but say it differently from everyone else. Sound impossible? It’s not, if you know what to look for. The following are words which, if used in e...

Eight Book-Generated Empires You Can Learn From Building an empire may sound overly ambitious, but it’s certainly possible. It has been said that in order to “get big,” one has to think big. Below are a few authors that have started their own revolutions. Each author listed has used different strategies to grow their platforms: radio interviews, television appearances, speaking engagements, publi...

Effective Fiction Research The question of why research should be a part of the craft of writing fiction I’ll leave for another article. Suffice it to say, there are three reasons at minimum to include the skill of research in your craft. The first and second reasons require an understanding of the reader. It may or may not be surprising to learn that far more non-fiction titles are published and...

Effective Editing: It Spells the Difference! If you think proofreading equals editing, then you're wrong! Editing is a lot more than just scrutinizing your manuscript for misspelled words or missing punctuation marks. As a whole: Edit only *after* you've written the *whole* piece. If you stop to edit after every paragraph or sentence, you will disrupt the flow of your thoughts. It is better...

Editing Secrets Once you’ve plotted out your book, developed the characters and written the last word of text, the real work begins. As busy editors are bombarded with hundreds or even thousands of submissions a year, it’s more important than ever that authors apply their own editing skills to their manuscripts before putting them in the mail. Checking your basic grammar and spelling are of cours...