By Kathleen Y’Barbo Turner @KathleenYBarbo When my daughter was in kindergarten, her teacher asked the children to interview an adult about his or her job and come back to class the next day with a report on what they learned. Hannah grilled me about my job as a writer, and I answered her questions about how I constructed my stories. …
Getting Your Word Count… and Making Your Words Count
by Brandy Heineman @brandyhei Today I’m celebrating the release of my newest novel, Like Honey for the Bones. The title inspiration came from the Proverbs. Pleasant words are a honeycomb, Sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. -Proverbs 16:24 (NASB) This lovely verse gives us an important truth: words matter. Though they can be weapons, they can also …
Reach THE END, Press SEND, Repeat
By Kathleen Y’Barbo-Turner @KathleenYBarbo As the author of more than 100 books, I often get asked how I manage to write all those books. My answer? One book at a time! I know, but it’s true. I also get asked for my secret to how I manage to reach THE END and press SEND time after time. Please understand I …
Setting S.M.A.R.T. Goals for a Productive Writing Year
By Lisa Jordan Instead of making resolutions, I claim One Word for the year. I also use the My Brilliant Writing Planner to map out a values-based plan for what I hope to achieve. That includes all areas of my life—faith, family, friendships, health, work, writing, etc. However, it’s so easy to be overwhelmed by the enormity of it all …
Three Tips for Polishing Your Rough Draft
By: Katie Powner As an adjective, the word rough means “having an uneven or irregular surface; not smooth or level.” Boards can be rough. The seas can be rough. But how can stories be rough if they don’t have a surface? Well, they do. The surface of a story is the plot. Everything that happens, that you can see in …
Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Some Ideas to Write Around Real Life
by Tammie Fickas Ah, the life of a writer! You get to sleep in, enjoy your morning coffee on the back deck, spend a few hours at your desk, and boom, you have success. It’s enough to make a girl quit her day job and call herself a writer. Okay, before you stop reading, we all know it doesn’t work …
The Juggling Act: Working Full-time and Writing
By Amy Clipston People often ask me, “How do you work a full-time job and write books?” I resist the urge to roll my eyes, and instead reply, “I just make it work.” Unlike some authors, I work full-time for a local government, in addition to writing four or more books per year for HarperCollins Christian Publishing. In fact, in …
Pushing Through Growing Pains
By Kariss Lynch I found out I was pregnant with our first child two months before my fourth book baby was set to launch into the world. Needing mental energy to finish editing Heart’s Cry and having no physical energy in the first trimester was quite a doozy. However, the more I pushed through and the further we have traveled in this …
Tips for Fighting the Dreaded Writer’s Block
By Amy Clipston Through the years I’ve found that my book projects fall into two categories—they either write themselves or writing them feels like having my teeth drilled. In other words, the characters either tell me the story or I push them through the story as if they were dead weight. My novella “Bundles of Blessings” included in the collection …
Using Secrets in our Stories
By Darlene L. Turner Have you ever kept a secret from your mom as a kid? I did one time… “Don’t tell Mom,” I said to my brother Murray. “She’ll kill me!” Once again, I didn’t listen to my mom and decided to take our friend’s 5-speed bike for a ride. We had pleaded with Mom, but she wasn’t ready …