Kent Sanders 
Today’s episode is the first in a seven-part series on dealing with rejection. As writers, we deal with rejection in many forms. You can be rejected by a reader, a publisher, a literary agent, a podcaster, a beta reader, a book reviewer, a peer, and so much more. This rejection can be formal or informal, … Read more
Have you ever noticed that writers like to talk about the things they’re working on? It’s a strange habit, isn’t it? Maybe it’s because we like to get feedback on our current work in progress, which is totally fine. Most of the time, it seems like we talk about our current writing a lot because … Read more
We’ve all heard the stories about people who take years to write a book. In some cases, that’s necessary, especially if the author is writing a very large book or one that requires a lot of research, such as a biography or a technical book. However, in most cases, we can write books much more … Read more
If writing is a house, each of us lives on two levels. The ground floor is where we invite people in. We share things we think people want to hear. We say a lot of nice things, put some coffee on, and invite people to sit around the table. On the ground floor, we have … Read more
The way some of us writers shrink back from a challenge, you’d think we live forever. We hesitate to write that book because we fear what others will think. We don’t set up that website because it feels too hard. We don’t meet with that person who is five years ahead of us because we’re … Read more
When you begin studying the lives of the great writers, one of the most surprising things you’ll learn is how well aware most of them were regarding their limitations and the role that luck played in their success. For example, Ernest Hemingway once said, “I have tried simply to write the best I can; sometimes … Read more
One of the curses of being a writer is that we are too rational. We pride ourselves on reporting the facts of a situation accurately. We love the idea of having an objective point of view, then giving our commentary or perspective. We don’t like the idea of getting carried away with our emotions. We … Read more
I want to take a moment to let you know about an important milestone we just passed here on the podcast in the last couple of weeks. We hit 100,000 downloads! There are many podcasts with far fewer downloads, and many podcasts with much, much larger numbers. So, what does 100,000 downloads actually mean? It … Read more
Every day, you are surrounded by news—news on the internet, news on television, news in the newspaper, news that other people deliver. Have you ever thought about how the “news” is actually created? What makes a “news” story, anyway? Let’s take the most ubiquitous form of news we all grew up with: the nightly news … Read more
There are a lot of reasons people give for avoiding the hard work of writing. One of the most common ones is a lack of time. Others include not knowing what to write about, or confusion about processes like blogging or publishing. Another reason exists that is worse than all the others combined. It also … Read more