The Writing Texan Writes
It Sucks to Lose Your Best Ideas. Tools to Capture Your Inspiration
Inspiration has a rascally sense of humor. There’s the sudden rush of a great idea. The solution to a tricky problem becomes clear. Key memories surface. It illuminates the world like lightning, leaves you breathless and excited, and fills you with an almost physical...
How to Write the Story Readers Believe
I gave my husband, the bear, my copy of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (an amazing book). After the first chapter, he looked up from the pages and said, “Gah, what a pretentious A*hole! He just dropped the first narrative right in the middle and jumped to a completely...
Blog, Book, and Brand – Your Best Content Marketing Path
Seems like content marketing is everyone’s go-to advice these days. Has anyone—marketing professional or otherwise—ever told you, “Oh, you’ve got to get a blog (or more content. Or a book.) for your business website!”? Photo Credit: Jose Maria Cuellar...
Brave New Work
There are 53 million freelancers and independent contractors in today’s U.S. workforce. Certain sources say that by 2020, half of American workers will do some kind of indie job. Some always dreamed of working from home; others had it thrust on them by a job loss. And...
When Good Content Goes Bad: A Cautionary Tale
Business people often seek out someone like me because they’re busy. Writing consumes time and energy they don’t have to spare. So they hire me, set parameters, then say “get to it.” That’s fine. Still, I always urge them to stay aware and involved as I work. Great...
Cuckoos in the WordPress Nest (My Site Was Vulnerable and Yours Probably Is, Too)
My business demands that I maintain a website, but I make no claim to being a web design expert. I help people write books, I’ve always thought that was enough to be getting on with, and so I’ve always reserved this space for writing-centered advice. However, after...
Celebrate Your Creative Independence with a Simple Writing Hack
Greetings from the Writing Texan! After taking a winter hiatus (then getting buried in spring cleaning), what better way to announce the return of the newsletter than with a tip designed to kick your writing into gear? There’s no worse feeling than staring at a...
Does Writing Spook You
October is the perfect month for confronting fear. For one thing, everything from TV movies to roadside haunted houses already has us thinking about what scares us. For another, the weather is finally cooling down, so that excuse (which I often use to avoid running in...
October Webinar: Your Perfect Platform
Kevin Daum 28 October 2013 4:30 CST Kevin Daum is a popular Inc.com columnist and author of Amazon #1 Bestellers Video Marketing for Dummies (Wiley), ROAR! Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle (Wiley), and Green$ense for the Home: Rating the Real Payoff on 50...
Webinar: How Do I Know When it is Time to Find a Literary Agent
Lacy Lalene Lynch of Dupree/Miller & Associates will be conducting a Writing Texan webinar on September 13, 2013. Lacy Lalene Lynch is a literary agent with Dupree/Miller & Associates, an innovative agency representing bestselling authors, thought leaders, and...