Monthly Archives: September 2013

Today is always a hard day for me, as I’m sure it is for many others who suffered far worse. Every year, I have nightmares, can’t sleep and spend most of every September 11th crying if I stop long enough to think. At first, I wasn’t going to blog, but then I thought back to one of my favorite poems, In Flander’s Fields. Canadian physician and Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote the poem after presiding over the funeral of a friend lost in WWI in The Second Battle of Ypres.

I loved the poem so much, I committed it to memory. I was eight years old.

This morning, I couldn’t get the verses out of my head, thus please forgive me. I took some creative liberty with the original poem in hopes of honoring those lost on 9-11. I’m no poet, but maybe this can be a little bit of…

I am making this post as a public service announcement. I just want to encourage all of my fellow readers and bloggers who are Goodreads members to disengage from attacking authors on the site. In the past couple of days, I have seen several Facebook posts by authors of different genres who have mentioned being attacked by readers. ‘Readers’ are one-starring pre-released books or dive bombing every book the author has ever written with one-star reviews. Why? Because these ‘readers’ feel as if the author has made some reprehensible infraction against the world of literature as a whole *eye roll*. I know…dramatic, right? But sadly, it’s true. The internet trolls have now taken up residence on Goodreads. They are pollinating the site with their vitriol against authors and fellow readers who might support the author or their book(s). At some point, we as a community of readers and authors…

We live in a society that feeds us a lot of lies. The biggest one is about TIME. Oh, if I only had more time, then I could (fill in the blank). The truth is we are all given the same amount of time—24 hours a day. Of course the next big lie that’s easy to believe (and I’ve been guilty) is Well, if I only work HARDER, that will get me where I want to be.

That’s crap.

More time doesn’t equal MORE AWESOME.

Thus, today we’re going to look at some of the lies and time-stealers and ways to be masters of time, not slaves to it. We need to be vigilant and proactive so we don’t fall into Hamster Wheel Management. We’re called to be fruitful NOT busy.

We Can’t Find Time, We Can Only SPEND Time

One of the most common phrases in the English…

For those confused, WordPress has been possessed this week and for some reason published some notes I’d saved in a DRAFT. Sorry for the confusion.

Anyway…

Becoming a non-fiction author has a number of steps. After having written both fiction and non-fiction, I don’t think one is easier than the other. There are unique challenges to both. Yet, I will say that even novelists can benefit from the same tactics employed by good NF authors.

Like fiction, there’s seemingly infinite variety of types of non-fiction. There’s self-help, narrative non-fiction, informational non-fiction, and on and on. Much of being successful in non-fiction (and fiction) is finding your audience, then developing your voice and then marrying your voice to a style that suits you.

Think Like a Journalist 

A friend of mine, Author Caitlin Kelly, is the one who pointed this out to me, and she is an amazing and successful journalist…