Seven Tips on Writing for Children

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Hello from Crystal Bowman! I have been writing for children for over 20 years. Before writing my first book, I spent 5 years as a preschool teacher and 12 years as a full-time mom. From my twenties to my forties, young children were part of my daily life. I am now in another decade with grandchildren, so I still have little ones in my world. When I teach at writers’ conferences, or when someone wants advice on writing for children, I always remind them that they have to know kids in order to write for them. They need to understand…

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Tips from the Pros: Dr. Ted Baehr

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Greetings from Sarah Sundin in California! Today I have the honor of interviewing Dr. Ted Baehr. Not only has Dr. Baehr penned many books, but he is the founder of the popular and influential Movieguide® review service, which is having a surprisingly positive effect on Hollywood. Check out the statistics in the final question below! Ted, how did you get into writing? When I was the president of the company that produced THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE for CBS Television in 1979 and 1980 that had 37 million viewers and won an Emmy Award, Roy Carlisle from Harper…

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What was I thinking???!!!

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  Hola from Janet Perez Eckles…Igniting Your Passion to Overcome In my career as a writer and speaker, there have been way too many “What was I thinking!” moments Through the years, I’ve written about the pitfalls of looking into the past. I have realized the drawbacks of dwelling on yesterday’s mistakes, or last year’s failures.

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Make it Your Best Year Yet

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Personally and Professionally I (Pam Farrel) have selected a word and a verse for the year each January since I was 19. Bill and I when we married at twenty, continued this tradition. Download our Your Best Year Yet goal-setting worksheets. Selecting a Word for the Year helps provide focus. We each choose an area needing the most growth, help or improvement. By focusing our energies, choosing a Word for the Year, a verse, a theme and a clarifying question, we often see powerful results.

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Avoid the Most Common Writing Mistakes

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Georgia Shaffer from Pennsylvania Several of my coaching clients are writers and speakers who surprisingly make similar mistakes in their writing.  Here are six suggestions I find myself repeating, which you may find helpful. 1. Write and let it sit for awhile. Your writing should be allowed to age, like great relationships.  While you may not always have the luxury of time, plan ahead when possible. Work on other projects and come back to what you’ve written a couple of weeks later.  You’ll be stunned at what you find that you did not notice earlier. 2.  Hire a professional editor….

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“The Emperor Has No Clothes!”

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Hi, Dave Fessenden here, with some advice to Christian writers from one of my favorite children’s stories. In “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” a great ruler is hoodwinked by two charlatans who claim to have made him a set of clothes from material that is invisible to fools. The emperor cannot see the nonexistent clothes, of course, but he does not want to be considered a fool — and neither do all his subjects — so they join in the pretense that the outfit is the most beautiful they have ever seen. Their self-deception is shattered at the royal parade, when…

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Marketing: Seven Benefits of Bookmarks

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A note for you from Author Carol McAdams Moore A bookmark is an effective marketing tool that can be used by authors and retailers alike. When my tween devos came out, the creative people at Zondervan put together some amazing bookmarks. With each of my marketing efforts, I am increasingly more thankful for those bookmarks. Here is a list of seven benefits of bookmarks.

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Never Give Up!

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HELLO from Kathy Collard Miller in the sunny California desert near Palm Springs. My 50th book, Never Ever Be the Same: A New You Starts Today (Leafwood) will be released tomorrow, January 13th. I never could have seen that coming so many years ago when I started writing. Even as a child I’d always wanted to be a writer and so when the Lord put it on my heart to write an article about how He had delivered me from being a child abuser, it felt perfect. I sold that first article to Moody Monthly in 1978 and then decided…

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Pace Yourself: Part 2

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Historical post by Gail Gaymer Martin. Earlier I’d blogged on Part I of Pace Yourself, the ability to drive a novel to the peaks and down again as the story builds and ebbs with excitement and drama of conflicts and crises. This post presents another look at good pacing through various techniques.

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Pace Yourself: Part 1

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Historical Post by Gail Gaymer Martin Today is the first part of Pace Yourself: Keeping Pace in Fiction. Pacing – What is it? Pacing is moving the characters from the opening situation through various growing conflicts to the resolution in a logical, realistic manner that shows character growth and, in Christian fiction, provides faith grow. Pacing is the speed at which action in the story moves and the reader gains information. Most people assume “pacing” means the book is too slow, and that is very possible. But the pacing can also be too fast if it rushes the conflicts and…

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