When I use technology, I can’t help but think of this driver’s refrain, passed on to me by a former (slightly suspect) driver’s ed instructor: if you aren’t sure where you’re going, it’s best to travel on the road you know. It sounds dull and silly, but sometimes the shortcut gets you lost, takes longer, or causes an unnecessary headache. Take the road well-traveled if you know it will get you to your destination. It may not look pretty or be efficient but at least you know where it takes you. With technology, knowing what you are doing is crucial. Sometimes, as I had to remind Jill last week, it’s best to skip the shortcuts and go with what you already know. You see, there’s this lovely plug-in for WordPress blogs that allows you to post a snippet of your latest blog post, within 10 seconds of clicking “publish”, to your Facebook Page. It can be a bit of a hassle to set up if you’ve never created an application in Facebook before but I’ve found that the end result is worth it. When one of our clients launched her website last week, Jill asked me to set up her blog so that it would feed onto her author page on Facebook. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fulfill her request… because our client wasn’t using a WordPress website. You see, we decided to create her website using a different content management system (CMS) and it wasn’t as advanced as WordPress in terms…
“There’s a long history, of women especially, saying ‘Well, I just got lucky.’ I didn’t just get lucky. I worked my f***ing a** off. And then I got lucky. And if I hadn’t worked my a** off, I wouldn’t have gotten lucky. You have to do the work. You always have to do the work.” –Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things Simply… [Read More]
Filed Under: Cheryl Strayed, dedication, disciipline, luck, shortcuts, work
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“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that,” Stephen King wrote in his memoir, On Writing. When I hear from aspiring authors they don’t have time to read, I think about Stephen King’s observation. The likelihood of publication plummets when a writer doesn’t read. It IS that simple. As a developmental editor… [Read More]
If there were some easy ways to be more productive as a writer, would you want to know about them? If so, read on. “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” —W. Somerset Maugham In the above quote, Maugham is getting at one of the critical distinctions between professional working writers and, well, everyone else (which here… [Read More]
Little Free Library Big Book Access Kickstarter Campaign met its fundraising goal last week to help get books into the hands of those who need them most. Created by Todd Bol, the campaign celebrated the 3rd anniversary of the non-profit which he started as a tribute to his mother who loved books and loved to share her passion for reading. A couple years ago… [Read More]
Getting Found Online as an Author You can’t afford to ignore the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) if you are a professional writer. The title of your book can affect whether readers find it using search engines. Putting Your Passion into Print was the name for the first edition of the excellent guidebook written by Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry. It is now… [Read More]