Archive for the 'Your Writers Group community' Category

The Story Uses You

I'm a PK (pastor's kid). So for many years I resisted anything that smacked of churchy Christianity. But stories could always circumnavigate my barriers. Jesus knew this too–the story was everything. When he asked which man did the right thing, everyone knew it was the Samaritan. Story sticks in the brain and causes the hearer to rethink their ideas in light
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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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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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Writer Imperatives 101: Let Them In

I don't recall learning to read, but I know I was still pretty young when I first started retreating to my room to read. I remember Robinson Crusoe, The Chronicles of Narnia, and A Wrinkle In Time, looking up words in my paperback dictionary, and basically sealing my fate as a book nerd for the rest of my life. It
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Does Your Writers Group Provide These 3 Essentials Every Writer Needs?

Welcome back, everyone. Hope you had a fabulous Easter. Being a book editor is such a strange job. It has enormous up sides: not requiring me to, say, buy a lot of expensive equipment or be out in extreme elements. I don't have to dig through anything too revolting. At least not physically. But still, it has its challenges. Chief
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