Ripples and Results: The Value in Updating Your Online Presence

by Yvonne Ortega @YvonneOrtega1

Have you ever changed one small item on your bio and then felt shocked at what else you needed to update? Simple changes had a ripple effect on my upcoming interactive workshop.

On Writer’s Chat, sponsored by Serious Writer, Inc., I noticed promotion of our next guest, author Edie Melson, to teach on writing an author bio. Since Edie is an expert on this topic, I squeezed that session into my workday. I didn’t think I would have much to update on mine. After all, I had several headshots and my bio done in the past couple of years.

OTHER Valuable Reasons for Following Writing and Publishing Rules

by Edie Melson @EdieMelson

Any of you who know me are well aware of the fact that I’m a rule follower. But what may surprise you is the fact that following rules isn’t my natural inclination. At heart I’m a rebel and proud of it. But I learned—often times the hard way—that there is also great value being a rule follower. 

I need to confess that in my early days as a writer my rebel nature led me to make some serious mistakes. I really thought I knew best and believed that the rules were for other people. I’m not sharing this because I’m proud of that attitude. I’m sharing because I want others to learn from my mistakes. 

How Libraries Help Authors Reach Readers

by DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills

Libraries are in the business of ensuring their patrons have plenty of reading, viewing, and listening choices. They keep their scopes up for the latest and greatest media items to fill their shelves. Every genre is represented, which means a win-win relationship for writers. 

Dipping the Quill Deeper: When God Speaks

by Eva Marie Everson

Years ago, while at a small writers conference—and by small, I mean there were twelve of us along with one leader and his wife—I heard for the first time words penned by Frederick Buechner in his book The Sacred Journey. The words were few, but powerful, so much so that I asked our leader if I could take a picture of the page he’d read from.

Within a week of returning home, I had ordered a copy of the book, originally published in 1982, which doesn’t seem that long ago until I think about it. After it arrived, its cover having been only slightly abused, its pages yellowed, I sat at my desk, pencil in hand, and began to read.

How to Use an Actor's Tool to Write More Compelling Characters

by Ane Mulligan @AneMulligan

An actor gets into character by slipping inside skin—or head if you will of their role. It’s a mental exercise to shelve your own thoughts, feeling, reactions, etc. to become the character. 

It’s much the same in writing. We, the author, must climb inside our POV character’s head and write what she or he sees without telling the reader she saw it. 

Blogging Doesn't Have to Be Scary: How to Overcome These 8 Common Blogging Fears

by Edie Melson @EdieMelson

It's almost October and in honor of Halloween, I just couldn't resist a tongue-in-cheek post about the scarier parts of blogging. After spending the year traveling and teaching writers about blogging, I have heard about every fear—heck, I’ve suffered from most of them. So today we’re going to look at some common fears about blogging and how to overcome them!

Remember, none of us is born knowing how to do this stuff. So let's find a way to combat our phobias together!

Radically Transform Your Character’s Arc with These Five Key Character Flaw Insights

by Zena Dell Lowe @ZenaDellLowe

A few weeks ago, a writer friend of mine reached out to me about an issue he was having in terms of the character arc. Every good writer knows that a fundamental principal of good storytelling requires the inner transformation of the main character over the course of the story. By the end of the telling, the main character is not supposed to be who he was at the beginning. By the time the story ends, we expect that character to have fundamentally changed. 

Maximize Your Amazon Reviews with These Eight Book Launch Tips

by Lori Hatcher @LoriHatcher2

Authors knows it’s important to gather a tribe of book reviewers to help launch a book. Reviews help attract attention, give a book credibility, and help potential readers decide to buy your book. 

The Best Things About Being a Writer

by Henry Mclaughlin @RiverBendSagas

In my last blog, I wrote about reassessing where we are in our life journey in These Priorities in Our Lives Make Us Better Writers.

When we consider our writing life, it’s easy to focus on the negative things, the hard things. As I reassessed, I also thought of the good things about being a writer. Thus, the catchy title to this blog.

Lead Your Readers Deeper into God's Word When You Ask this One Insightful Question

by Katy Kauffman @KatyKauffman28

What question can we ask about any passage in the Bible so we can learn from it? What question would apply to both the Bible’s stories and its promises? What could we ask about Psalms and Proverbs that we could also ask about the books written by the prophets? What question would fit both Romans and Revelation?

Writer's Block Happens, Here are 5 Strategies to Keep Writing

by Lucinda Secrest McDowell @LucindaSMcDowel

Back in 1993, just after being named “Writer of the Year” at the Mount Hermon Writers Conference in California, I contracted for my first solo book. My proposal had been accepted and I was so excited to put together all I had been learning about God’s amazing grace – the gift we don’t deserve and can never earn. 

Unfortunately, when I returned home to New England, I faced a blank page in my computer.

Connect with Readers Through These Follow-Up Strategies for Writing and Marketing Success (Part 1)

by Karen Whiting @KarenHWhiting

In the sales world and probably many other areas, 80% of opportunities are lost due to lack of follow up. The writing industry is very relationship based, so it’s vital to cultivate connections. 

We meet people in all sorts of places. They can be potential readers, connectors, or industry professionals. On a plane trip recently, I met a Christian woman who loves reading. I gave her names of authors she might enjoy. Then she shared some difficulties, and I realized I had a book from a friend in my bag. I gave it to her. She emailed when she got home to thank me, and we agreed to pray for one another. That’s a new connection that could blossom into a friendship, or even a fan.

Even Writers Need to Play—Join in on the ABCs of Writing

by Tammy Karasek @TickledPinkTam

I don’t know how your year has gone, but my year has been rather testing on many levels. The summer brought us a new degree of on our knees praying. A lot. With that, I’ve lost a lot of time to write, which in turn has me pretty down. 

I’ve struggled with writing and all the doubts and questions have risen to a bubbling point. But I’m generally a positive person—and definitely one who loves to giggle as much as possible—so I thought I’d give us something to get any of us writers out there with drooping chins something to have fun with. 

Let’s have some fun and play “The ABCs of Writing.” I enjoyed trying this as I prepared this post, but I know you all can add to my list. For each letter of the alphabet, share a word in the comments below that is writing and writing industry related. See how many more you can add, and maybe we might find ourselves having to do a little research on some words we’ve not come across in our writing journey yet. 

Play the ABCs of Writing

A – agents, archetype, antagonist, acquisitions, alliteration.

B – brainstorming, bylines, bios, blogging, beats.

C – caffeine, chocolate, coaching, connections, critiques, conferences.

D – deadlines, deleting, dictionary.

E – editors, edits, engagement, editing, eBook.

F – friendship, fiction, flash-fiction

G – genre, galleys.

H – hybrid, historical.

I – Independent.

J – Jargon, journal.

K – keywords.

L – learn, lingo. 

M – manuscript, metaphor.

N – nonfiction, novel, novella.

O – online, outline.

P – premise, publishing, platform, protagonist, plot, POV, punster, proposals.

Q – query, questions, quantifiers.

R – romance, reading.

S – synopsis, suspense, subplot, speculative.

T – thesaurus, togs, trope, theme.

U – update, understatement.

V – value-added, voice, vocabulary.

W – writing, write, writer.

X – Xenophanic (for real writing term!).

Y – YOU (only YOU can answer YOUR calling to write YOUR story).

Z – Zoom!, Zzzzs (need your rest), Zeugma (look it up!).

Those are some I have come up with. What else would you add to the list? 

TWEETABLE

Even Writers Need to Play—Join in on the ABCs of Writing, from @TickledPinkTam on @EdieMelson (Click to Tweet)

Tammy Karasek uses humor and wit to bring joy and hope to every aspect in life. Her past, filled with bullying and criticism from family, drives her passion to encourage and inspire others and give them The Reason to smile. She’s gone from down and defeated to living a “Tickled Pink” life as she believes there’s always a giggle wanting to come out! 

She’s the Social Media Manager for the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference, Founding President and current Vice-President of ACFW Upstate SC, Founding President of Word Weavers Upstate SC. She’s a writing team member for The Write Conversation Blog, Novel Academy, and MBT Monday Devotions and others. Her work was published in a Divine Moments Compilation Book—Cool-inary Moments. When not writing Women’s Fiction and Rom-Com, she’s The Launch Team Geek helping authors launch their books and a Virtual Assistant for authors.

How to Reactivate A Dormant Email List and Reconnect with Readers

by Patricia Durgin @PatriciaDurgin

You never thought it would happen to you. One minute, you were ecstatic to hear that special “bing!” that a new reader signed up for your email list. Hooray! The next minute (or so it seemed), months passed since your last email. That email list has gone silent. Dormant. Almost dead. (An e-mail “list” is a collection of names and email addresses of readers interested in a specific topic within your message.)

The Writer's Life: How Waiting to Be Picked for a Team at Recess Prepared Us

by Crystal Bowman

Pick Me!

Most of us can remember standing in a group of kids on the playground as the two best baseball players chose kids to be on their teams. I remember my heart pounding, my stomach churning, and my self-esteem hanging on the line as I waited to be chosen for the game at recess. Once I was chosen first, and one time I was chosen last. Most of the time I was somewhere in the middle.

Techniques to Improve Your Book’s Amazon Rank

by Susan U. Neal RN, MBA, MHS @SusanNealYoga

Would you like to be an award-winning, bestselling author who sells over 500 books a month? To achieve this goal, you need a multi-faceted approach to book marketing. It is not one specific technique that causes a book to sell well. In this article we will review the strategies used to get one of my book’s overall Amazon rank to 4,400 out of 6,000,000 books. That ranking is better than 99.9 percent of Amazon books. A snowball effect occurred as layers of techniques were utilized to improve book sales and Amazon ranking.

Why Editing is So Important for Writers Who Want to Continue to Improve

by Linda Gilden @LindaGilden

One of the best bits of advice a new writer can follow is to have their projects professionally edited, especially in the early days of writing. Turning in your first manuscript is an exciting moment. But even more exciting is to have your editor respond with, “Your writing is so clean (that means few mistakes).

Improve Your Writing: Choose to Edit Until It Hurts

by Cindy K. Sproles @CindyDevoted

Statistics show nearly half the marriages performed in our nation today, end in divorce. It’s enough to divorce a person but who would ever divorce their words?

Part of the learning curve in writing is learning to divorce your words. This is especially difficult for new writers for two reasons:

Social Media Basics for Writers: Deal with Unrealistic Expectations

by Edie Melson @EdieMelson

“I’m not getting any traction with social media,” is one of the complaints I hear a lot as I travel and teach writers how to connect.

There are a lot of reasons people feel this way, a few are legit, but most are just unreasonable expectations. Today I’m going to address the unrealistic exception for social media that many have. 

God's Hope is the Foundation for Writers When World is Falling Apart

by Martin Wiles @LinesFromGod

The news and I have a love-hate relationship. I love to know what’s taking place locally, nationally, and worldwide—but at the same time, I often hate to know what’s going on. 

As Andy Taylor of the Andy Griffith show once said when reading the town newspaper: “Bad news everywhere.” The news always seems to be bad. In fact, we might find it odd when newscasters occasionally include something uplifting in their reports. 

Currently on the list: COVID still runs rampant, even though we don’t hear as much about it. The President of the United States recently recovered from COVID, and soon after our first lady battled it. Monkeypox continues to spread. The war in Ukraine continues. Mass shootings are a regular occurrence. Inflation is on the rise. Airline flights experience high cancelation rates. Almost every business is short-staffed. Temperatures are rising, reflecting the effects of global warming. Drought conditions assault vast swaths of the United States. Criminals continue to ambush law enforcement officers. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. (Now I’m really depressed.)

I don’t have any trouble concurring with what the psalmist said and asked: “The foundations of law and order have collapsed. What can the righteous do” (Psalm 11:3 NLT)? And what can a righteous writer do? 

Why We Shouldn't View Other Writers as Competition

by Beth K. Vogt @BethVogt

I’ve learned a lot of different things since I published my first novel back in 2012. Things like:

• How to write a synopsis in all its various forms—one paragraph, one page, three pages or more.
• How to write an author bio—25 words, 50 words, 100 words or more. 
• How to brainstorm book titles and back cover copy and press releases and more. 

There’s one thing I wish I’d learned earlier in this writing journey, and it’s summed up in this quote: “Other authors aren’t your competition—they are your teammates.” Jenn Hanson-dePaula, co-founder of Mixtus Media 

How to Keep Your Heart in Your Writing

by MaryAnn Diorio @DrMaryAnnDiorio

Heart. How would you describe it? Emotion? Feeling? That special something that touches the deepest part of you?

One Internet dictionary defines heart as "the central or innermost part of something." The heart is the core that gives something life, around which everything else grows, and from which everything else flows. Without the heart, there would be no life.

When it comes to writing, heart is what gives your writing life. Heart is that special something in your words that stirs your readers, moves them to tears—or to action. Heart is what makes your readers keep turning pages and keep buying your books.

Stay Connected to God On the Writing Journey

by Julie Lavender @JLavenderWrites

The Problem

When I called to report a problem with my email, the responder from my internet service provider company said, “Well, I see here that your router is ancient. Maybe that’s the problem.” 

Ancient? I thought I’d only had that one for about three years now. And, I wondered why I’d not been informed that it was past its prime, since I leased the router from them anyway. 

The Influence of Writers on the World

by Sarah Sally Hamer @SarahSallyHamer

I believe that we, as writers, have a large amount of influence in this world. We tell our stories, whether big or small, and people of all ages have the opportunity to use them as guidelines in their own lives. I know that some of my own ways of dealing with things—love, family, despair—come from the books I’ve read over my lifetime. Of course, I have received my personal values from other places, but stories of other people have helped me to find ways to deal with everyday emotions and troubles. 

Surprise Shock and Delight Your Reader

by PeggySue Wells @PeggySueWells

Readers like to be surprised. Characters that remain in our memories long after the story is complete often are the ones who in some way shocked, surprised, and delighted the reader. 

In a romp of storytelling, the characters in Fool’s Gold rapidly shift from enemies to partners to competitors to team players. The feature film starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson, is loosely based on the true story of treasure hunter Mel Fisher’s discovery of the 1622 wreck of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. The fun surprise is how character alliances break and form as new information comes to light, and in reaction to choices others make. Rather than casting characters into the customary roles of good guys versus bad guys, the writers rotate characters in and out of these places.

Get Your Blog Found and Connect with Your Audience by Using These Basic 26 Blogging Tips

by Edie Melson @EdieMelson

Blogging is a great way to connect with your readers, build your platform and hone your writing skills. But like anything valuable, it takes effort to learn to do it effectively. Today I wanted to find a fun way to share some blogging basics. 

A Prayer for Your Writing Dream & Against Discouragement

by Edie Melson @EdieMelson

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10 NIV)

Dear Lord, You have put a dream in the heart of every person reading this. This dream is such a fragile thing. But is it really? In truth, with its roots resting in You, it’s one of the strongest things we have. Lead us places to help this well-rooted dream grow. Keep us from yanking it out from the root when we are frustrated and don’t think things are moving the way they should or as quickly as they should. 

Writing Tips from Mister Rogers

by Tim Suddeth @TimSuddeth

Whether watching it as a child or with our grandchildren, many of us are familiar with the Mister Rogers Neighborhood show on PBS. Fred Rogers began the show in 1968 and it ran to 2001. It’s been shown in reruns ever since. Mr. Rogers, after changing into his comfy sweater and slippers, welcomed us into his home and his neighbor every morning. 

Writing an Un-Put-Downable Character (Part 8 of 10): Dreams

by A.C. Williams @ACW_Author

What do you want?

Seriously. I’m asking. What do you want? Because we all want something. Right now, I want fajitas. That’s not an exorbitant dream, but it’s a dream. 

It is a normal, natural state of being for a person to want something they do not currently have. Having dreams is part of being human. You have them, and so your characters need to have them as well. That’s what we’re talking about this time: DREAMS. 

Best Writing Advice Ever: Write What You WANT to Know

by Lynn H. Blackburn @LynnHBlackburn

We’ve all heard the classic writing advice to “write what you know.” 

And it makes sense for some things. If you know a lot about horticulture, it follows that you would write about plants and not about something else, like space exploration.