The Value of 99 Cents These days, with so much free–YouTube has free music, Amazon has free downloads, libraries (for the most part) have free books, and the Internet has Free Everything–how does anyone manage to sell their wares? The answer, from one corner of the creative industries in particular, seems to be pricing countless items at $0.99: ebooks, MP3 tracks, TV shows, etc. But how does one...

Great Fiction Comes From Writing Lightly Great fiction appears effortless to the reader. The characters and setting are so real, the story so believable, that the reader is completely unaware of the author behind the words. The smoothness of the text belies the hours of hard work and practice that went into its creation. The authors who achieve invisibility have learned the art of writing lightly...

Giving Up Too Soon So you feel beaten up and bruised and you’re ready to quit.  You have no support system or the one you have is pathetically inadequate for the goals you’ve set.  You’re so tired that the couch is looking more and more inviting everyday.  You have bills piling up and you probably ought to get a real job anyway. The failure rate is statistically high and nobody is going to fault...

Give More Than You Get A member of one of my writing groups confided in me that she was fed up with the way that she was feeling used by other writers. This writer is very talented and accomplished, and she’s a member of a few different groups that trade feedback and critiques of each other’s work. “I feel like I get back 10% of what I put in,” she said. And she was losing her energy, thinking ab...

Got the Contract! Now What? Hooray! You wrote a great book/screenplay/book proposal/short story/etc., and someone has offered you a contract. Congratulations. Before you eagerly sign on the dotted line, though, it’s very important to know what you’re signing, and educate yourself about what all the terms mean. If you have an agent or attorney, great. But if not, what do you do? Publishing and e...

Good Reasons Why You Can’t Rely on Your Spellchecker If you are reading this article, then you probably own a computer (or are at least using a computer to read it). I will make the underlying assumption, then, that you currently use your computer’s word processing software for writing and creating documents. I’m going to stick my neck right into that noose hanging out there on the Assumption Tre...

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...