A friend of mine always teases me about being held hostage when Jess is with me (as opposed to when Jess is with her father), because I answer the phone less and don’t talk as much. It’s absolutely true, and if said friend were to make an issue of it, my response would be, “Have…
Tag: The Writing Craft
On burning bridges
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading some version of this advice over and over: Don’t burn bridges. Be nice to everyone. You never know when someone will be able to help you down the road. Which, oh please. Sometimes the best thing you can do in life is burn bridges. Douse them…
Avoiding creative burnout
I recently got a note from a writer saying she felt creatively drained. She said, “My book is good. How can I convince others?” Reading between the lines, I figured she’d written a book she felt was excellent but agents/editors were rejecting it, and that was making her feel a lot like not writing any more…
What’s Your Book?
That’s my new tagline for Act 3. (Waaay back in Act 1, I would have snorted tea up my nose if someone had suggested that I needed a tagline. What can I say? Times change.) I love writing books, but I also love helping other writers shape their book ideas and bring them…
Your perfect game
If you follow sports, and even if you don’t, you probably know that Dallas Braden threw a perfect game for the A’s on Sunday. For some perspective: that was the 19th perfect game in the history of Major League Baseball. Given that your local team plays 162 games each season, and there are…
Outsourcing to protect the work
You may think I mean hiring someone overseas to handle your customer service. I don’t. While I have used virtual assistants in the past, most of the work I do these days doesn’t lend itself to that approach. Pitching an editor, writing a novel, posting regularly on my blog – none of this is something…