Writers: Give The Gift of “Getting Off The Dime”

Also known as getting one’s ass in gear. With my son in college I spend an inordinate amount of time pondering career choices.   Not mine (too late there)… his.  About how to launch one’s naïve and hopeful self in the general vicinity of making a worthy and enduring dream come true. First you find such […]

Attack of the Killer Story Ideas

As a writer you get this question all the time: where do your story ideas come from?  Sometimes we have an answer – like, it’s based on my divorce experience when I wanted to kill my wife’s lawyer – sometimes we fake it because we don’t really have a clue. And upon occasion, the universe […]

The Lyric-Inspired Log-Line Contest Winner Is…

The highest goal of storytelling is to write something that changes lives.   For us this takes 400 pages and a whole lot of talent and luck.  For songwriters, they get three minutes to come up with an iconic line or two that makes them and their music immortal.  More people on the planet remember Imagine […]

The Holy Grail of Getting Published Big

That’s what we all want, right?  In our secret heart of hearts we want it all, the window position at Borders, a spot on the Times list, maybe a morning shot on GMA.  Truth be known, that little secret desire resides right next to the unflagging belief that we can write as well as the […]

Finding – and Leading With — Theme

(Note to skimmers – read to the end for a fun little storytelling exercise — and a contest!) Some writers are completely and totally theme driven.  Every story they write has an agenda, a message to send and a point of view to either explore or sell. Others are story-driven, and because their stories are […]

The Elusive And Confounding Core Competency That Is “Theme”

Among the six core competencies that surface and triumph in a publishable story (that includes movie scripts, by the way), none are quite as slippery, challenging and, too often, confusing as theme. Oh, it’s gotta be there, no doubt about that.  But getting it into the narrative, as well as the sub-text of the narrative, […]

Resurrect an Abandoned Story or Start Something New?

What’s the newly enlightened writer to do? Old, abandoned stories are very much like ex-lovers.   There was a time when they made your heart sing and your hormones percolate. But it didn’t quite work out.  You either dumped them or they ditched you.  Either way, there’s an explanation that’s often left hanging, perhaps unaddressed and […]

A Mindset Shift That Can Get You Published

Today I offer you a new writing mantra.  In fact, you can start right now – just say the following words, proud and out loud, as fast as you can: Mindset shift.  Mindset shift.  Mindset shift. As you just experienced, it’s a lot harder than it seems.  Just like writing a killer, publishable story is a […]

12 Worthy Writing Resolutions – and One Life Resolution – for the New Year

Welcome to the first year in the rest of your writing life.   What kind of writer will you be this year? You get to decide that one. Parents, teachers, role models and a choir of the enlightened will continue to tell us something we need to hear very clearly: success, and what comes with it, […]