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Too Much Time on my Hands
I worked at J. Walter Thompson when James Patterson was the Executive Creative Director. Word around the agency was he sat at his desk at 5 am every day, writing his mystery novels. Whether you’re a...
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Goooooooooooal!
Let’s assume the Mayans got it wrong and we will see the dawn of a new year. That’s right, no excuses for not looking ahead. It’s time to assess the past year, see what we’ve accomplished and set some...
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Embrace Your Inner Virgo
I discovered the power of list making early on. Sometime around Thanksgiving every year, my brother and I would sit down at the kitchen table to knock out our Christmas lists. Our parents and Santa...
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When You Don’t Meet Your Goals, Rationalize
At 16, I set a goal. I wanted to be an All State Swimmer. I was the South Carolina state champion in the 100 and 200 yd breaststroke. You’d think that would be enough to qualify, right? No! To be...
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Expect to Succeed
Throughout my life, I always snubbed my nose at the idea of creating New Year’s resolutions. I felt like that was something that only occurred in the movies and that anyone with enough ambition could...
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Community Not Competition
Once upon a time, I was convinced that I had all the answers. I knew everything that I needed to know about getting my work out there for the world to see. Those other writer/directors out there were...
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Finding Your Community of Writers
People in the arts, in general, are drawn to each other. We’re odd. We see the world from a different perspective. We’re observers. We’re sponges. And we need each other. But what is this sense of...
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It Takes a Village
In 1996, Hillary Clinton published It Takes a Village, a book that asserts that it takes a community to raise quality (i.e. smart, well-adjusted, achieving, etc.) children. When you think about your...
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The Writing Platform – Finding Your Niche by Dawn Frederick
Since we are discussing the writer’s community this month, we knew that we HAD to discuss the Writer’s Platform, a relatively new term with some serious buzz. To kick off our discussion on Writer...
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6 Ways to Strengthen Your Author Platform by Jennifer Worick
6 Ways to Strengthen Your Author Platform I was once interviewed by the arts editor for my town’s weekly. I talked about the various books I had published, the writing process, and my philosophy on...
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Don’t Watch The Play
Not long after I started writing my first play, I called a local playwright and asked if I buy him lunch and pick his brain. (Food is always a good way to reach theatre people.) It was very...
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A Cure for What Ails You
Perhaps one of the things for which I’m most grateful in having completed my MFA is the time it forced me to spend looking inward. For as much time as I was asked to consider the writing of others, I...
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ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…Wake me When Something Happens
By Darlene Cah I had written humorous essays, sketch comedy and advertising copy, but always danced around fiction, too scared to really commit. Though, I’d tried to write short stories now and again,...
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“It Has To Hurt If It’s To Heal”
By Jennie Jarvis Do you remember The NeverEnding Story? While being chased by bullies, young Bastian (Barrett Oliver) hides in a small bookshop where he discovers a book unlike any of the “safe” ones...
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Getting Emotional by Matt Peters
5writers is delighted to welcome today’s guest blogger, Matt Peters. Matt Peters has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans and a BA in English from the University of Central...
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Writers Need to Read
Writers Need to Read By Brad Windhauser I watched Project Runway for a couple seasons early on, in part because I like to see what pressure does to creativity.I also enjoyed the cat-fighting as well as...
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Here And There…Or Maybe Just Not Anywhere
by Ron Hayes Recently I opened a poetry contest to celebrate a historical event’s bicentennial here in my town. Entrants were invited to address and/or interpret the contest’s theme as broadly as they...
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The Performance or The Page? Poetry’s Great Schism
by Ron Hayes In the month or so since my last post, I had the pleasure of hosting a poetry reading to close out the local poetry contest I’d run over the summer. I invited all those who had entered a...
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“Tennis Anyone?” or: “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Handcuffs”
by Ron Hayes Stockholm Syndrome. Harry Houdini. Robert Frost. Spelunking. A short but strange list, no? It may not be obvious right away, but there is a thread of commonality that runs through it. But...
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How to Further Your Craft by Developing a Personal Reading List by Brad...
How to Further Your Craft by Developing a Personal Reading List by Brad Windhauser When I was pursuing a writing degree at UCSD, one of my professors—from whom I learned a lot and for whom I had a lot...
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