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Award-winning, Nashville-based writer, editor and journalist Katie Lewis talks about the creative community, being a freelancer, setting deadlines and remaining healthy and inspired.
A fellow writer doing the hard work of slogging away to fill in the blank page emailed me a question that gave me pause: how in the world does one write an entire book?
This one had me scratching my head: How do we fill a novel? How do we sustain a story across hundreds of pages and thousands of words? My goodness, it looks like Mount Everest. But I have some ideas to share.
Read morePopping in after nine months away to make two confessions about my writing life.
And P.S., can you still call it a writing life if you haven’t done much writing? Asking for a friend.
Read moreWhat I really, really want this year is admittedly huge and will have the longest-lasting impact on my writing life: I want to define my writing brand and orient my work toward that end.
Before you ick out over the word "brand" when it's applied to a creative craft, let me share how I'm defining this: I want to figure out who I am as a writer, what my voice sounds like, the type of stories I want to tell, the messages I want to impart. Phew, that's a big one. But I think it's time.
Read moreThe end of a year is full of actions you're meant to take, from setting earnest health goals to making amends with friends. December is a grand rush to tie up loose ends and skate into the new year fresh and apple-cheeked.
What we have in common, my friends, is that we want to write well, and we want to do it year-round, not just in January. So let's talk about the self-care work you'll want to do before you even start writing that outline.
Read moreYou might have a new role as a parent, yet that doesn't mean you've lost the desire to create.
For Pete's sake, how can you make it work? Let's talk about how to get back into the creative writing routine while maintaining some grace (and sanity).
Read moreCrafting an outline for your writing project is one tool you can use to reach that ever-exciting The End. But there are no grade-school flashbacks here and certainly no wooden ruler crackdowns. Here's one way you might go about creating your book's outline and several reasons why you should.
Read moreThere's an old proverb that says to never let the truth get in the way of a good story. But what about when it's your job to lie in order to tell a story?
Ghostwriting for clients was the catalyst to help this writer find her truth again and recapture her unique creative voice.
Read moreSelf-publishing is a way to gain readers for writers either immobilized by the traditional publishing process or thwarted by the constant rejection. There are benefits to self-publishing that go beyond cash money, though, and I picked the brains of three self-published authors to learn the ins and outs. Meet and learn from them here!
Read moreSelling a product no longer looks like pushing out ad after ad. Instead, it's about building relationships, even friendships, with your consumers -- relating to them and reminding them that you aren't just a company but real people and personalities who exist behind the company and relate to their customers.
This is why, as writers, we need to know the difference between writing to sell and writing to build community -- and the benefits to prioritizing the latter.
Read morePick up just about any nearby book -- go ahead, I'll wait -- and you'll see a brief quote or two on the cover trumpeting the book's value. Did you know that for the most part, it falls to writers to solicit the blurbs for their own books? Oh, yes. Eek City.
Here's everything you need to know about the blurbing process.
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