To My Fellow Hard-Working Writers

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Happy Labor Day from Jeanette! While researching a new book idea I stumbled upon this bit of historical trivia: Labor Day was official recognized in 1894 when President Grover Cleveland signed a law establishing it as a national holiday. The observance actually dates back to September 5, 1882 when workers paraded in New York City, fighting for unionization and an eight-hour work day. Declaring it a holiday was the president’s way of honoring the American workforce. By the early 20th century Labor Day marked the official end of summer. As a kid Labor Day meant: • A barbecue with neighbors • Anticipating…

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Refreshments Will Be Served

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 Dianne Neal Matthews here, wishing you a Happy Labor Day! Are you celebrating the holiday weekend by taking a break from your writing and marketing labor? That's something hard for us writers to do, isn't it? After all, we can't just clock out and walk away from our job. Even if we go on a trip, we might leave our briefcase at home but we always carry our work-in-progress around in our head. So what's a writer to do?

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Reframing Impossibilities

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Jan Kern here . . . hoping to offer a few words of encouragement for those tough moments in a writer’s life. Wherever you are in your writing journey, I’m going to guess that there is something going on right now that feels . . . well, impossible. Could be pumping out that amazing, hard-to-turn-down proposal, or getting it into the right hands. Could be, now that you have the contract, the deadline feels impossible . . . or you’re staring at a flashing cursor going nowhere. Maybe the book is published, but effective marketing feels out of reach, either due to…

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