Secrets to Success: Two Simple Steps

I have a question to propose. Why is someone who is twenty-four more successful, making more money, and having a better life, than someone who is fifty-four? Putting aside factors like race, opportunities, socioeconomic status, what else? Why are you not Oprah or Shonda Rhimes? Why are you not Tyler Perry or Denzel Washington? We…

On Story Ideas: The “What If”

Story ideas. One of the main questions writers get asked or they ask themselves is “how do I get a story idea?” Watching different writers in interviews or sitting in the audience at a book signing, they all say something different. Some writers get their ideas from dreams. Others get hit with an idea by…

On Starting: Get the Writing Done

I’ll start with the plainest fact about writing possible. It’ll never get written if you don’t write it. There. Simple and clean and fact. If you don’t write it, no one will. No one else can write the short story or poems or novels that are in your head but you. God won’t reach down…

The World Needs Stories: Why Stories Matter

Stories matter. Stories are as old as time. We’ve been telling stories before we knew how to write, and passed stories down through oral traditions. Telling stories is an innately human tradition, and there’s a reason why in all cultures all over the words humans tell each other stories. We tell stories all the time….

Inspired or Stealing: What’s the Difference

Let me tell you a story about a time I got inspired, but I didn’t steal due to that inspiration. I was watching a movie (2016 Sing Street) for my Studies in Young Adult Literature class. At the very end the young teenage couple are in a small boat running away from home together and…

Get Writing Done: Set Deadlines

Writer’s Digest, a popular American magazine that focuses on writers and writing advice, has a pdf article called “Why A Writer Without a Deadline is Looking for Trouble.” It’s a downloadable link that you can find at the end of this post. Every time I slow down with my writing, procrastinate more and more, start…