Streamline Your Social Media Life With These 9 Tips

By Edie Melson @EdieMelson

Social media can be a time suck if we’re not careful. 

We can spend hours and hours without seeing results that justify the effort—unless we pay attention. It’s time to work smarter, not harder. 

Today, I think I can give you some ideas of how to multiply the benefits without cutting in to valuable writing—and family—time.

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On Cultivating Carrots & Creativity

By Edie Melson @EdieMelson

But all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner. 
I Corinthians 14:40

Spring is here and so many of the people we know are busy planting gardens. As I listened in on one recent conversation, I was drawn back to one summer when I decided to try my hand at gardening.

Our boys were young, and we had decided—for some unremembered reason—that planting a vegetable garden would be a great idea. I can’t imagine that either my husband or I would have had the time or energy—after keeping up with three active young boys—to really take care of it. Oh, the optimism of young parents.

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Don’t Quit Your Day Job

by Elizabeth Musser @EMusserAuthor

We’ve all heard the quip, when starting out on the writing journey, ‘don’t quit your day job.’ It is usually offered by a caring friend (or editor) who knows that making a living in the writing world can be daunting. But I’ve found that keeping my day job has not only put food on the table but has also blessed my writing. For the past twenty years, my day job as a missionary in Europe has inspired my other job of writing ‘entertainment with a soul.’ Paying attention to daily experiences, whatever that may include, can certainly provide us writers with great content for our stories. Here’s how my day job inspired my latest novel.

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First Page Punch - Keep Your Reader Engaged from Page One

By Lynette Eason @LynetteEason

As a writer, I’m deathly afraid of writing a book that a reader is going to pick up, read the first page, and be bored to death. Keeping that fear in mind as I write, my first goal is to immediately engage the reader in the story. That’s where the First Page Punch comes in. (Yes, I made that up.) What I mean by this is, my first scene starts off with action. And I don’t mean boring action.

You don’t necessarily have to have a car chase with bullets flying and bodies dropping, although that’s great if you do, but you do need to have something happening. Save the backstory and introspection for later.

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Love Me Tender

by Susan May Waren @SusanMayWarren

With Valentine's Day just two days away, romance is in the air.

“Christian Romance, is there such a thing?”

Wow, I sure hope so! But you have no idea how often I’ve heard those words from nice, church-going folks who I know are married and once fell in love.

Today we’re going to take a look, real quickly, at Sexual Tension in a romance.

No, no, no, our Christian books don’t have sex in them. But it doesn’t mean our characters are made of cardboard! You don’t have to say the s-word to create sexual tension. The author can focus it on eyes and lips and thinking about kissing or holding someone…because this is a natural response to the deepening affection characters have for one another. This is a very normal part of their relationship – it’s how far they pursue this normal part that makes a difference (as in every relationship).

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3 Ways a Critique Group Will Boost Your Writing

by Gayla K Hiss

Want to Boost Your Writing? Consider a Critique Group

Most people don’t enjoy receiving critiques of their work. It’s not easy to hear that someone isn’t as enchanted with your character as you are, that your dialog is stilted, or the plot doesn’t make sense. When an editor at a conference told me that I needed to join a critique group, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea. First of all, I didn’t know many writers who lived near me. Secondly, I realized it would require a considerable investment of time critiquing other people’s work, time I couldn’t devote to writing. Then there would be those dreaded critiques of my own work that I would need to deal with.

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What Marketing Is…And Isn’t

by Melissa Tagg @Melissa_Tagg

So, February is sort of a lovey-dovey month with Valentine’s Day and all, so it’s only fitting we continue talking about something I love: author marketing.

(If you just groaned at those two words, no worries. You’re normal. I’m the weird one.)

But here’s the thing, marketing doesn’t have to be a moan-inducing. It can even be, get this, fun. The key is understanding what good marketing is…and isn’t.

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The Joy of Hindsight

By Jennifer AlLee

Here it is, December 31st, the eve of a new year. About this time we usually look back at the year with nostalgia (or with a shudder and a prayer of thanks that it's over). Often, it's a time to make resolutions. Today, I'd like to look back, but way back...all the way to Christmas of 1995 and another time-honored tradition: visiting the mall for a picture with Santa.

A wee bit of context here. My son, Billy (who prefers Bill or William now, but at the time was definitely Billy) generally loved having his picture taken and was quite photogenic. On this particular day, he was not, shall we say, agreeable to sitting on a strange man's lap and looking happy about it. I watched as Santa tried to charm him, bouncing him on his knee and never dropping his jolly facade. I, however, was far from jolly. I was mortified. I wanted to explain to Santa and anyone watching that my son really wasn't a little monster, he was just having a bad day.

When the ordeal of sitting for the picture was over, we moved down the line to pick up the proof sheets, which they printed on the spot. The result wasn't good so I had no desire to purchase a package of pics to share with family and friends. But I wasn't going to leave empty handed, so I bought the proof sheets.

It's fair to say, I considered the day a failure. My son was miserable, we had not brightened Santa's day, and there was nothing jolly about the outing. But a funny thing happened. The following year, I came across the proof sheets. When I looked at them, I felt none of the negative emotions from that day. Instead, I burst out laughing. Not a snicker or a chuckle, but a full out, fall over sideways, tears of joy kind of laughter. To this day, I cannot look at those pictures without laughing. What I saw as a disaster when it was happening has now become a great source of joy.

To wrap this up with a pretty bow and show why this should matter to all you writers, let me say this: There are times during life (in general) and writing (in particular) when it feels like everything is going wrong. Those times stink, no doubt about it. But it's just possible that, somewhere down the road, you'll look back on those times and burst out laughing. At the very least, you may smile knowingly, aware of the growth and strength that came from the perceived failure.

So, as we say, "Later, baby!" to 2016 and greet the new year, I have one simple resolution: To find joy in unlikely places. Care to join me?

TWEETABLES

The Joy of Hindsight by Jennifer AlLee (Click to Tweet)

What I saw as a disaster has now become a source of joy~ Jennifer AlLee (Click to Tweet)

Strength that came from the perceived failure~ Jennifer AlLee (Click to Tweet)

Jennifer AlLee was born in Hollywood, California, and grew up living above a mortuary one block away from the famous intersection of Hollywood & Vine. Now she lives in the grace-filled city of Las Vegas, which just goes to prove she’s been blessed with a unique life. A multi-published author, she’s worked with four different publishing houses in the genres of Women’s Fiction, Contemporary Romance, and Historical Romance. When she’s not busy spinning tales, she enjoys playing games with friends, attending live theater and movies, and singing at the top of her lungs to whatever music happens to be playing. 

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Breaking Through The Writing Wall

by Lynette Eason @LynetteEason

Recently, I had something happen that I’ve never experienced before. I hit a wall. A writing wall. I had the story in my head, I had part of it on paper and yet, I couldn’t seem to sit down and just finish the thing. Which was really bad because I had a deadline looming.

I have to admit that after almost 40 books, this experience was rather unnerving. I mean I would open the manuscript and just stare at the words I’d written. However, I wasn’t quite ready to panic yet. I was actually rather intrigued. I’d heard about writers’ block, of course, and while sometimes I’ve had to sit and think before putting my hands on the keyboard, I’d never actually been “stuck” to the point where I just couldn’t figure out which words to type. So what’s a writer to do when that happens?

Here are a few things I’ve done to get the words flowing again.

1. Pray about it. Here’s kind of how my prayer went. God, I love you. I know you love me. To be honest, I’m not really feeling it because while you gave me this story to write, the words aren’t coming. So…could you please give them to me? Sometimes He does, sometimes not.

2. Go do something else. If God doesn’t lay the words out for you right away, it could be that you just need to do something else. Yes, even on a deadline, stop the story and go to something else. Like work on the next story you have in the line-up. Or go watch a movie. Or read a book!

3. Set a tiny goal. Come back to the story that’s due and tell yourself you’re going to write just fifty words on it. And even if those fifty words are awful, at least you can fix awful. You can’t fix blank.

4. Stream of consciousness writing. Just write about what could happen. Do you need to introduce a new character? Does a character need to die? What is something that could happen that your reader would never expect—mostly because you didn’t expect it either. I mean, seriously, you could just be writing words and more words hoping that something will make sense. And then your heroine’s best friend ends up dead in the bathtub! WHAT??? But that’s another story altogether…(yes, that happened to me in Don’t Look Back.)

5. Exercise. WAIT! Don’t hit me…but yeah. It works. It gets the blood pumping and sometimes that blood seems to carry an idea or two to the brain. Try it. And besides, it’s good for you. And if you do that, you don’t have to feel guilty eating chocolate later.

6. Write first thing in the morning. Like early. I don’t know why that’s my best writing time, but it is. When I get up, if I’ll jump right on the story, I’ll get some of my best words of the day in. And if I wake up at 3:30AM (like I did two mornings ago) I don’t lie there and toss and turn, I simply get up and start writing. Even if I couldn’t think of a thing to write two hours before I went to bed. For some reason, the words decided to come at 3:30. I wrote over a thousand words before I started getting sleepy again. I went back to sleep around 5:30 and slept until 8:00 so lack of sleep didn’t ruin my whole day and I already had most of my word count done.

So, there you have it. Six ideas to knock through that writing wall. Don’t get discouraged, don’t get frustrated, just keep writing. What about you? What do you do when you feel like you’ve got writer’s block? Any great tips for getting past it?

TWEETABLES

Breaking Through The Writing Wall by Lynette Eason (Click to Tweet)

6 Ways to Get the Words Flowing Again~ Lynette Eason (Click to Tweet)

Lynette Eason is the award-winning, bestselling author of almost forty books. She writes for Revell and Harlequin’s Love Inspired Suspense line. Her books have finaled or won awards in contests such as The Maggies, Inspirational Readers Choice Award, The Carol, ECPA Book of the Year, and The Selah. She is also the 2016 Daphne du Maurier Award winner in the Inspirational Romantic Mystery/Suspense category and Overall Daphne Winner this year. Her most recent achievement is placing in the top 10 out of thousands of entries in the James Patterson co-writing competition. Lynette and her husband Jack live in upstate South Carolina with their two teenagers. Lynette can often be found online at www.facebook.com/lynette.eason , @lynetteeason (Twitter) , and www.lynetteeason.com.

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Write Your Own Happy Ending

by Heather FitzGerald @WriteFitz

They say to, "Write what you know." Yes, that elusive group of insider-experts (aka they) are always quick to dispense wisdom and point out where we fall short. Alas, they are unparalleled in their counsel and we must strive to meet their exacting standards.

But aren’t they also the ones that said ‘rules are made to be broken’? I think they might be confused.  

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13 Social Media Rules that Every Author Needs to Know

by Edie Melson @EdieMelson

Social media is a tool. But like any tool we need to know how to use it and not be overwhelmed by it. Here are some basic social media rules every author needs to know.

Of course I'm not insisting you always follow them. Like anything in publishing, we have to work smart and apply the rules when they make sense for our specific situation.

1. Be consistent in posting social media updates. Small regular steps get you much farther, much faster. By posting 4 to 6 social media updates at day, 3 to 4 days a week can help you build a powerful platform much faster than any other way.

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