Author Archive

Relaunch: the new blog

Welcome to the new Your Writers Group blog! For many years, I had a blog of helps for writers about editing and creativity and publishing, and it was a lot of fun. When I launched the larger community site, I always intended to get back to it with more helpful stuff. But it took some time to get my act
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The Power of Critique

So critique groups. Good or bad? It's like asking if publishing is good or if a book is good. Of course the answer's yes and no. Like everything else. It always depends on the people in them. And just like everything else, what you get out of them is largely dependent on what you bring to them. Know someone who
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Writing like Mr. Rogers Lived

Just this.   How do you want to be remembered? Just stop for 10 seconds and consider how your words are liberating others today.

Editor to Author: Letter to a Memoir Writer

Dearest Author, I've been thinking about worth lately. What's your story worth? At a recent writers conference I taught a workshop on how I saw publishing changing. Modern publishing, the only time in history when we've had separate "markets" for books, has begun to fracture and redistribute. I've shared several times about how The Shack has shifted things. It isn't
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Writers Conference “Dos and Don’ts”

From an editor's perspective, writers conferences can be a mixed bag. For those of you planning to attend one in the near future, or wondering whether you should, let me offer some dos and don'ts that apply to any writer's conference you might attend as an aspiring author… Do know your genre. Everything may be expanding into new genres and
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