By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Some people have journaled since they received their first notebook or diary. They entered information daily, weekly, or whenever the whim urged them to complete an empty page. Some of them used a lock to prevent others from reading their inner thoughts, while others hid their recollections where no one could find them. Many people today …
How Publishing a Book is Like a Wedding
By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills While reading a wedding invitation, my thoughts took a journey of comparing the writer’s road to releasing a new book like planning a wedding. The project brought a few giggles and a few sobering analogies. Read the following 7 likenesses of publishing a book to a wedding. Note the #7 is the number of completion. The …
The Case of the Missing Laptop
By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills After boarding a night flight from Houston to South Carolina, I removed my laptop from its sleeve and went to work, immediately losing track of everything around me except the story unfolding in my mind and on the screen. The time came for me to stow my laptop. I slipped it into its sleeve and placed …
Room to Breathe
DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Guest Post by Linda Lyle Do you ever find yourself going down the anxiety rabbit hole? Like many businesses, writing is a feast or famine. I am either waiting to hear back from editors, agents, and publishers, or I am overwhelmed by deadlines and details. Either way I feel anxious as I wonder how it will all …
Finding the Perfect Novel Title
By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills It’s been said that “a book’s title is its most important marketing strategy.” I shouldn’t be surprised when I consider how long it takes me to create a title for a book. I keep a file of titles, and still I end up in a dilemma. My purpose is to think of my title as a …
Life Happens – and Sometimes It’s Funny
By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Most of us wander through life and occasionally something humorous happens. The memory of the event brings a smile to our lips . . . maybe a giggle. One of those funny happenings met me recently on a flight from Houston to Greenville, North Carolina. The hour grew late when I boarded the plane, and I’d …
Unexpected Blessings
By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Guest Post: Janice Cantore My favorite definition of hope is “A confident expectation of future blessings.” When I moved to Hawaii a little over four years ago, I didn’t know what to expect. It was a big move, and I knew that a lot of things could go wrong. It’s never easy for me to make …
How to Rekindle the Passion for a Writing Project
By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Writers must have passion for their writing projects or no one else will. No getting around it. But what happens when we are no longer excited about our book, blog, article, poem, screenplay, or other types of writing? How do we overcome the lack of interest? A few of life’s happenings can contribute to our disillusion. …
Exploring A Writer’s Imagination
By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills Fiction writers use their imaginations to transport readers into an adventure. Imagination and creativity are not the same tools, but they work together. Imagination propels creativity by connecting what our mind sees with how best to show it to readers: an inner landscape is used to develop the outer landscape. For example, a writer imagines a …
When a Writing Critique Slashes the Heart
By DiAnn Mills @DiAnnMills We writers are a passionate, emotional group. While these traits help us create beautifully worded fiction and non-fiction, nothing slashes the heart deeper than a harsh critique of our work. We might catch ourselves reading a harsh critique and thinking: “Even an idiot would get this.” “What? You’ve got to be kidding?” “Obviously, my style doesn’t …