Good Monday morning readers!
Today, I’m shining the spotlight on Lisa Collier Cool, a best-selling author and winner of 18 journalism awards. She’s written more than 400 articles for the Associated Press, Cosmopolitan, Family Circle, Fitness, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s, Hallmark, Harper’s Bazaar, Health, Health Monitor, Ladies Home Journal, Marie Claire, O the Oprah Magazine, Parenting, Parents, Penthouse, Publishers Weekly, Redbook, Reader’s Digest, Self, Woman’s Day, Writer’s Digest and many others.
Lisa also is a prolific author. Her book, Beware the Night: A New York City Cop Investigates the Supernatural (with coauthor Ralph Sarchie), reached #3 on the Amazon bestseller list, and …read more

When I didn’t make Michael Stelzner’s list of Top Ten Blogs For Writers, I posted twice about it. Michael himself suggested it would be a gift, and he’s right. What I also didn’t expect was the support I’ve gotten from readers of this blog. Some in comments, some via email, and at least two blog posts.
For example, Lori Widmer, long-term writing friend I’ve never met devoted her post today to mostly me (ah ego) called: They’re Just Not That Into You
Thanks you all for your good thoughts. It’s appreciated.
Write well and often,

Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance …read more

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
Michael Stelzner, owner and creator of Writing White Papers runs a contest each year for the Top 10 Blogs for Writers. Now in its third year, the contest had almost 300 entries. I’ve had some envy for his contest and now I think I’m glad Micheal’s doing it, not me. Three-hundred entries is a lot to sort through.
But sort through he has and he’s posted the finalists. I made the cut, or rather we made the cut since comments and community are part of his criteria and I’m delighted with the company I’m keeping. Like you, I know many of …read more

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
Arghhhh. I’ll never finish this d**n book! At least it almost feels that way. This morning when I started I had about 30 pages to go. Now hours and hours later I’ve still got 16 pages to go. It keeps growing! I’ve gone from a 20,000 word count a week or two ago to over 31,000 – yikes that’s a lot of writing. I didn’t realize I’d done that much!
But it all needs to be done! The book is better for it. Pant pant pant. I feel like I’m chasing these last few pages.
Oh well, back at it.
Write well and …read more

Books are not only hard to write, the manuscripts tend to get long and messy. I’m going through the draft of my book about writing books and my headings are all messed up. I also changed typeface for the body somewhere in the middle. Plus, I started drafting in double space and then, as I got closer to completion, switched to single, except there are three or four sections that didn’t get switched.
As I’m editing and realized it was past time to set up a style sheet for the book. A style sheet simply defines the style, like typeface, type …read more

(www.thegoldenpencil.com)
Most of you who follow this blog are probably vaguely aware I’m writing a book about getting your book written. It’s designed to go with a class I’ll be teaching and I’m getting close to the end. I’ve figured out what’s wrong with the exercises and I know how I want to fix them although I haven’t done it yet.
After some soul searching I decided I have to include a chapter on marketing books, even though I don’t feel like I know much about getting books sold. So I drafted a chapter a month or two ago. Yech! I just …read more

Blogs by writers and by literary agents gives us some almost insider information that wasn’t available before blogging. If you’re looking for an agent you could do worse than search out their blogs. Here are a few agents and a couple of authors sharing their experiences with agency.
THE NEW LITERARY AGENTS – chatty blog from agents who are fairly new to agenting.
Guide to Literary Agents – a blog about finding and using agents by the author Chuck Sambuchino. Worth spending some time with.
Dystel & Goderich Literary Management – interviews with their authors plus posts by the agents themselves.
How To Get …read more

You’ve head me say it before – they are upgrading the electricity on my 1920ish cottage… it’s a fair drama for sure. I’m one of four, that is part of 10.
The next step is to “cut over” to the new box and this takes at least two agencies… the city and the electric company and at least one inspector. I’ll be running off extension cords until that process is complete and we don’t know if it’s half a day or a week and a half! So if the blogging seems spotty…
Darn, guess I should be set up with …read more

A friend, one who loves me enough to tell me the whole truth, asked me if I might be a workaholic.
I don’t know… or maybe I do. According to the Workaholics Anonymous website, the only requirement for membership is the desire to stop working compulsively. That doesn’t help a whole lot at the moment, but the site also has WA’s version of the 20 questions which I’ve quoted here:
How Do I Know if I’m a Workaholic?
1. Do you get more excited about your work than about family or anything else?
2. Are there times when …read more

Jennifer Williamson who owns her own writing service and blogs about it all at CatalystBlogger recently took a temporary full-time, on-site writing job even though she’d promised herself and the world she wouldn’t ever do that again.
She tells the story in a post called: On-Site Writing vs. Freelancing: The Showdown
As she points out, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. She then lists some benefits of on-site work and some drawbacks. Included in her benefits is Quick feedback on your work. And, apparently, in this on-site job that’s what she got, often in a matter of hours. My experience …read more