Why Getting Naked Is the Best Thing You Can Do for Your Writing

The best writing is naked writing—vulnerable writing, writing that draws from your own experience, directly or indirectly. Any other kind of writing is phony, and readers can smell it a mile away. Would you trust a yoga instructor who told you what to do without doing it herself? Would you trust a carpenter who never […]

5 Ways to Do What Matters Most to You

Steven Pressfield, author of the powerful kick-in-your-pants The War of Art, believes in two powerful voices in the world: A negative, dark voice that will stop at nothing to keep you from doing the things you believe are most worth doing. Pressfield calls this the Resistance. This voice is absolutely real. It is deadly. And […]

The #1 Reason We Turn Books Down . . . And How It Can Help You Get Published

Several weeks back I attended the International Christian Retail Show, which is the main annual event for Christian booksellers and related vendors. I’ve attended this show the past several years because it’s a good place to meet with industry friends, authors, and literary agents. One afternoon my editorial colleagues and I sat around a table […]

How to Write Stuff Everyone Wants to Read

I’ve been helping authors write for nearly fifteen years, and I have found one idea in particular has helped them to take their writing to the next level. It’s not original to me; it comes from Sol Stein and his book Stein on Writing, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to write well. […]