Follow Your Dream

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  All of us have dreams of what we want to do with our lives. Sometimes those dreams get sidetracked by the reality of life. Sometimes they’re so long in coming that we tend to give up and think, “What’s the use?” How do we make those dreams come true? Whether the dream is about a career choice, a place you want to visit, or something you would really like to do, the dream can come true. Fulfillment depends on attitude and faith. By attitude, I mean surrounding ourselves with the resources or the tools and information we need to…

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The Power of Positive Prose

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  Hello! Maureen Pratt, back again, for my monthly CAN Blog post. I’m very happy to be blogging today about the craft of writing and, specifically, the huge difference "writing positive prose" can make in describing characters, painting pictures, and conveying the heart of a story, be it fiction or non-fiction. What do I mean by "positive?" Given two possible ways of writing the same sentence, the more positive can be the strongest one to choose. Consider this description: "Amy didn’t necessarily think she was beautiful, but she couldn’t believe that the casting director put her in secondary roles that…

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Help! Where’s my story?!

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  Hello, again! Maureen Pratt here with my monthly CAN blog about the art and craft of writing. This month’s topic is, “Help! Where’s my story?!” or, “What to do when your story goes one way while you go another.” Whether we write fiction or non-fiction, plotting or outlining is often an essential part of the publication process. From the first query to the last book cover blurb, most of us try to envision the beginning, middle and end of a work before we dive in. But, as we authors know, as hard as we might work on those early…

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Speaking Engagements – Selecting A Topic

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Hi.  Winnie Griggs here again with the next installment on my posts about speaking engagements.  So far we’ve covered why you might want to book speaking engagements and dealing with those butterflies.  Today we’re going to focus on selecting a topic, in other words, what do you talk about. For those just testing the waters of speaking engagements, I would suggest you take stock of your personal skills and interests, and choose something you feel comfortable discussing.

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Lessons from the Greatest Game Ever Played

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  Over Memorial Day weekend, my sons and I watched the movie The Greatest Game Ever Played. If you’ve never seen it, Shia LaBeouf stars in the true story of Francis Ouimet, a working-class kid who falls in love with golf during the early 1900s. Read on to see what this could possibly have to do with writing.

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