Back when I was a teenager, I used to work at a sandwich shop with a really nice kid named Rob. Rob was a television fanatic. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn he’d gone on to be a tv writer. Every shift, he would tell me about what he’d been…

Too many of us writers fly by the seat of our pants at the start of a major project. We get really inspired, dive in without a clear plan for how we’re going see it through, then quit when we hit our first creative pothole. Our muse really deserves better…

I’m not big on horror movies and haunted houses. In fact, last year I almost didn’t take my twelve-year-old to the Halloween store to get the make-up she needed for her Ziggy Stardust costume because I thought the décor might be too scary. But I’m writing today to make the…

Sometimes we wait too long to do something that we know needs doing. Just a little example for you: I’ve known I wanted to be a writer since second grade. I was thirty-two when I finally got serious about it. Twenty-five years of hiding from my destiny — of thinking it was out of reach. Once I hit my teenage years, I basically…

I talk to a ton of authors. At events, online, and on client calls. I always ask how they feel about book marketing and I take notes. Reading back those notes is like reading the journal of an angsty teenager. Believe me when I say, I am NOT criticizing anyone…

Here’s some summer listening that that will enrich your writing life…and happens to features a few of the women from Pages & Platforms. 1. Sue’s on the Book Launch Show I’m sharing this one first, since there’s a time sensitive element. Tim Grahl is on vacation, so I was lucky enough to sit down with Valerie Francis…

If you do a google search on book marketing, you’ll get a staggering array of tactics that makes selling books look extremely complicated and time consuming. Some of it is bullshit. Some of it is woefully incomplete. Most of it misses the big picture. I won’t tell you that selling…