Open Book | TIPS FOR THE ASPIRING WRITER
Open Book: An Ending for 2011
Happy Holidays! We are about to witness the passing of another year. I suspect there will be many changes in 2012. You can feel it in the air. It starts with the economy, the political unrest on the national level and eventually trickles down into our homes and our daily lives. Some people hate [...]
Open Book: How to Create An Elevator Pitch for Your Novel
My long time friend asked me what my novel was about. I stammered and blurted out some incoherent description. (Don’t laugh! At least I remembered to mention the protagonist.) This brain freeze, unlike Governer Rick Perry, was not a matter of forgetting, but a matter of not having a succinct pitch scripted. What if that had been a [...]
Open Book: Is Blogging Overrated?
After blogging for a couple of years now, I am wondering if blogging is overrated. Yes, as a writer, you would think that this process is a no brainer and enjoyable. But in truth, it steals time from my day, from my other writing and reading, and although pleasurable, may or may not be all [...]
Open Book: Blog Content Basics
No two brands of ketchup taste the same. The basic ingredients may be similar — tomatoes (or tomato concentrate), sugar, vinegar, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, etc. — but the taste differences lie in the ingredient quality and proportion. And so it is with your blog. Your blog site is uniquely yours even though there may [...]
Open Book: Quick Ways to Get Your Blog Read
The writer…the teacher…the marketing guru in you emerges in a spanking new blog. I was told that if you write, the followers will come. True to some degree; however, your success will be measurably better if you write coherently and have something interesting to share (your opinion or some newsworthy mention). Well written blogs may [...]
Open Book: 3 Great Reasons for an Unpublished Novelist to Blog
People blog for many reasons, but for the unpublished novelist, blogging is a no brainer. I can’t remember which self-help guru wrote that if you want to be a novelist, you have to do what novelist do. If you imitate the behaviors of novelist, you will one day be that novelist. One of the behaviors [...]
Open Book: Airplane Mode for the Nook Made Easy
My mom had a hard time with the concept of Airplane Mode on her new NOOK. She is not the only one. Below is an easy explanation of airplane mode. If the airplane in the upper right hand corner of the screen shows, it means that the NOOK is in airplane mode. It is ON. [...]
How to Plot by Example
Are you a writer who can sit down and have dialogues and scenes stream onto the computer screen with little regard to structure? If you are, and are happy with your results, you are one of the lucky writers with a gift. Most writers need to craft the plot through scene summaries and outlines. I am not [...]
Finding Time to Write
When I was in my 20′s I lived paycheck to paycheck for many months. Eventually, as the Universe would have it, I would have to learn to be more responsible. I had to have a major repair on my car and had saved nothing for an emergency. I did what everyone else would have done. [...]
Reading People
I was in the JFK airport a couple of months ago and picked up a book called,”Reading People” by Jo-Ellan Dimitrius and Wendy Patrick Mazzarella. Aside from the fact that I am in marketing and the information might prove useful, I was wondering how relevant understanding people and being able to predict behavior might translate [...]
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