Start Your Morning Write

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Today’s timely message of encouragement comes Linda Goldfarb–CAN member, author, speaker, coach and dear friend to many who shares from the heart on her morning practice of daily writing. Thank you, Linda! I’ve written short term pieces daily for more than a decade. I began for my eyes only, as I’m a speaker who writes, you see. Until I chose to heed the Spirit to share my writings and now it seems I’ve started a fire of sorts. Not too hot for pre-believers, yet challenging, I hope, for those who have ears to hear. Here’s a taste. I pray its…

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First Impressions

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It was my first book to be published, and I was excited about flying to Colorado Springs to meet my publishers at their headquarters.  Coming from Florida and having been warned of the possibility of a late spring snowstorm in Colorado, I carefully picked out my clothes for the trip to make the best impression, strategic about packing a separate suitcase for cold weather and snow.  But the next day when the plane arrived in Colorado, my suitcase with my cold weather gear was missing. I awoke the next morning to find a blanket of freshly fallen snow outside my hotel…

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Finding God at the Spelling Bee

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Most of my newspaper bylines result from faith-based stories that I locate on my own. I enjoy sharing God-stories in the newspaper. As a newspaper stringer, however, I often have the opportunity to cover news-related stories, and I can honestly say I enjoy most of those stories, too. Some are a bit of a yawner, though, and three-and-a-half hours of spelling words fell in that category when I covered a school district contest a couple of years ago. Towards the end, two young brilliant boys went back and forth for thirty-five rounds before Elikem Gato stumbled on the word “mukhtar,”…

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Watch what you research!

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Watch what you research! by Mary L. Hamilton My husband, Wayne, doesn’t quite know what to make of my turn to the dark side as I write mystery/suspense stories. But when I was trying to figure out a good place to hide a body in our area, he arranged a meeting with a man he knows who has worked as a police officer in our area off and on for thirty years. For thirty minutes, this friend and I discussed ways and locations for disposing of dead bodies, while Wayne listened and wondered what had happened to his sweet, innocent…

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Authors, Do You Love What You Do?

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Marketing Tips From Cheri Cowell This sounds like a strange question–do you love what you do? But if we are honest, and if we’ve done this for any length of time, there are times in our writing journey when we can say we’ve fallen out of love with what we do. We’ve grown weary. If I’m describing you, I want to tell you that you are not alone. Here are a few things I’ve learned about being in this place.

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God Will Make a Way

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Hi there, Sherry Kyle here, writing from my laptop in Central California.    Do you experience fog where you live? This morning as I drove my youngest daughter to the bus stop I could barely see thirty feet in front of me. When I returned home, I grabbed my cell phone and snapped these pictures.   I thought about how fog resembled the writing life. It takes a step of faith to keep pouring our hearts on the page. Some days it feels as if we're typing through fog.

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