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Five Great Quotations about Originality
“The writer’s genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer’s only stuff for sale.” – James Gunn “When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.” – Blaise Pascal…
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5 Great Quotations about Write What You Know
“There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell what mutton tastes like.” – W. Somerset Maugham “My writing is full of lives I might have led. A writer imagines what could have happened, not what really happened.” – Joyce Carol Oates “How vain it is to…
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Promote your book with a speaking career
An excellent way to promote your book, especially if you write nonfiction, is with a speaking career. As you’ve authored a book, you’re an expert on the topic you’ve written about. People will want to hear you provide insights on the topic, learn a little about how you wrote the book, and discover some interesting insider…
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Your Story isn’t Its Plot or Structure
When discussing fiction, sometimes the terms “story” and “structure” are used interchangeably with “plot.” But a story is not a plot or the story’ structure. While this misuse of terminology may seem trifling, it unfortunately mangles many beginning writers’ conception of what plot is, ultimately harming their manuscripts. A story is an account of how characters…
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Writing Prompt: Make up a Situation
Suffering from writer’s block or need to add some spunk to your writing? The problem may be that you need to change up your routine. To that end, try this tip: Observe other people while in a public location. As you don’t have the full context of what they’re talking about or doing, make up a situation…
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Flat line those errors on indices vs. indexes
If I had to chart the times writers have asked about the differences between these two words, it’d be, well, off the chart. “Indices” is the plural of index, which makes it a noun. For example: “The politician presented several economic indices to prove we’re still in a recession.” “Indexes” is the present tense of the…
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Show Rather Than Tell the Backstory
Among the major errors some novice writers make is waiting to tell readers a story. Those writers begin their tale with lots of background information, such as the main character’s personality, where that character lives, what she does for a job, who are the members of her family, and so on. They believe that readers need…
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Basic Guidelines for Self-Publishing Ebooks
About 75 percent of all books these days are sold as ebooks – meaning they’re read on Kindles, Nooks, and other electronic readers rather than in paper form. As most writers are lovers of paper books, they often need reminding that they should self-publish their volume in ebook as well as paper form. Likewise, almost no one…
