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November Writing Challenge Day 8: What is Creativity?
Creativity – noun 1. the state or quality of being creative. 2. the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination: the need for creativity in modern industry; creativity in the performing arts. 3. the process by which…
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November Writing Challenge Day 7: If it’s Good Enough for Tony Robbins
Give away your book. Yes, you heard me. Give it away. Free. Charge nothing for it. I know you have worked hard on it. It is your baby. Now I’m asking you to give it away. Why would you want to do that? To get it read. To increase your name recognition. To increase your…
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November Writing Challenge Day 6: Dealing With Criticism
Criticism, or the fear of it, can lead to the problem we discussed yesterday: perfection paralysis. Yes, you want to make your work as perfect as possible. Yes, you should pay attention to detail. But often, there is a little, nagging voice in the back of your mind telling you that you just aren’t good…
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November Writing Challenge Day 5: Perfection Paralysis
Do you find yourself writing, writing, writing; always adding another chapter, thinking of a new small piece of information that just must go into your book, changing a sentence only to change it back again … and again … and …? Well you get the picture. At some point it is time to say, “Enough,…
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November Writing Challenge Day 4: Don’t Get Hung Up on Word Count
Why is it that so many writers I know today are hung up on word count? I think it is because it is so easy today to count words – the computer does it for you, and as you type each word you can watch the word count grow at the bottom of your screen.…
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November Writing Challenge Day Three: Your Subject and Your Theme
In yesterday’s post I asked the final question, “What message do you want your readers to gain from your book?” What is the one, most important idea or theme you want your readers to take away with them when they read the final page? I find that many people confuse subject and theme. How does…
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November Writing Challenge Day Two: First Steps
So you’ve decided to participate in the Open Door Publications’ November Writing Challenge. You are enthusiastic and ready to sit down and punch out your first 1,000 or so words. But wait! Don’t start writing yet. If you want to make this month-long challenge as worthwhile as possible, before you start writing willy nilly, you…
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What Are You Doing for NaNoWriMo?
It’s November and time for NaNoWriMo, that hideously named but well-intentioned event: National Novel Writing Month. The event, which is international despite its name, began in 1999 in SanFrancisco, with just a handful of writers. You can read more about the history of the month at nanowrimo.org, so I won’t bother to give more details…
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How (Not) to Have a Successful Book Launch
I have a lot of authors ask me about how to host a successful book launch. They know that Open Door Publications has held a number of highly successful launches for our authors’ books. But I have to confess we’ve also had a few flops. Events where the people just didn’t show up. So, while…
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Instead, it’s being read & cherished!
By Jodi O’Donnell-Ames I first wrote the story, The Stars that Shine, in 1997. I was 28 years old and living the best and worst time of my life. It was the best of times because my husband Kevin and I were young and in love and the proud parents of a delightful five year…
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Common Proofreading Finds
By Vivian Fransen Best performed by “a fresh pair of eyes,” proofreading is a task that involves doing a careful readthrough of a document and flagging any errors and inconsistencies in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. When you’re on a tight deadline, it’s tempting to skip the proofreading stage because you don’t want to bog…
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A Classic Scare
What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read? I mean the book that kept you sleeping with the light on, the one you stayed up all night reading because you knew that if you didn’t finish you would have nightmares. In today’s world where Halloween haunted houses pop up in every town and horror movies make…
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What Does It Take To Publish A (Successful) Book?
I’ve been saying it for several years now: It is easier than ever these days to publish a book. In fact, literally anyone can publish a book today and sell it on the internet. It doesn’t even take any money. My cats could publish a book! But would anyone read it? So what does it…
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Changing Your Inbox Settings on Gmail
I woke up a week or so ago to learn that Gmail had changed the way I view my mail. Now, instead of all of my mail appearing in one place, my inbox had been arbitrarily categorized by Gmail into “primary,” “social,” and “promotional” categories. I did not get a say as to which mail…
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The Right Place to Write
I recently heard a radio report on “the new home office,” and since we had just moved and were in the process of setting up my own new office, I was very interested to hear what others were doing. One of the people interviewed had just spent $25,000 on her new office. Any of you…
