Over the years I’ve gone to a few writers’ retreats, from an adventure like a cruise with Cruising Writers to a few of us hanging out in someone’s living room and getting a chapter in on a Saturday. Some encourage attendees to Have a Plan (so many words per day, speaker in the evening, socializing…
Did you ever have one of those weeks when, despite all odds, you managed to accomplish more than you ever thought possible? It’s been one of those weeks. I’ve been working 12- and 16-hour days, but as part of that, I’ve been writing 2,000-3,000 words a day on the book that’s due on Wednesday. Which,…
From Rachel Held Evans’s blog this week: “Christian bookstores have developed a reputation for producing a highly sanitized customer experience, purging from their shelves any language, content, or theology that doesn’t meet their uber-conservative standards. Walk into your local LifeWay and you will find plenty of Precious Moments statues, specialty Bibles, Veggie Tale movies, and…
In a recent essay on The Awl, Maria Bustillos said something that resonated with me: “The key difference between Fyodor Dostoevsky and Violet Winspear is—the beard, obviously, but in terms of literary production, the difference is that the latter is thinking more about you, the reader, whereas the former is thinking more about himself, the…
Over the long weekend I got a little reading done, and I noticed a funny thing. In three consecutive books I read the phrase, “giving him/her/it free reign,” meaning the subject had freedom to do what it wanted. Only … that’s not the right word. REIN is the right word, not REIGN. Authors only have…