As is so common with writers, there were years and years of work with barely any acknowledgment, interspersed with plenty of self-doubt. Writing is such a lonely pursuit, which is why when you finally get writers together at a conference, we are all practically panting with excitement to be aroundContinue Reading
What’s the best investment you can make in your book? My mom—a big reader—just finished reading a self-published book by an author she had read before. The first book she enjoyed. The second one, however, was frustrating for her. Because it was filled with errors. Was the author aware ofContinue Reading
[Photo caption: Author Jason Offutt and his wife Kimberly Offutt on a recent vacation at Rathbun Lake, Iowa. Yes, Iowa has lakes.] There are different levels of emotional stress that come with where a writer is in their career. Early on was rejection, until I learned that EVERY writer getsContinue Reading
My biggest emotional challenge related to writing coincided with the pandemic. I had previously spent a couple years writing a three-book fiction series, Prisoners of Hope, and released the first two in October and November of 2019. The third released in late January 2020. The books totaled more than 1,100Continue Reading
Words come easily for me and I have written all my life. As a child I wrote letters to friends and family. Stamps cost just a nickel and for a quarter I could write and get back five letters and I liked it. My letters were usually three-to-four pages longContinue Reading
For me, the biggest emotional challenges of being a writer have been self-doubt and frustration. It’s been a long journey – 20 years, to be precise – from when I first began writing The Wayward Spy to its publication. The years were marked with near successes, gutting disappointments, and uncertaintyContinue Reading
Need some help with book design? Graphic designer Carla Green has her own book designing business, and shares some tips with writers. By Carla Green My first jobs out of college were in marketing, and in those roles, I managed to position myself as the liaison with the graphic designContinue Reading
Learning to believe in myself was by far the most difficult hurdle I overcame. My introduction into adulthood started out pretty rough, and while I’d always had the urge to write, I’d internalized a lot of messages I shouldn’t have listened to and allowed them to impact just how vulnerableContinue Reading
I started writing when I was a kid and suffered from self-doubt. I had teachers and friends who cheered me on, but not so much my family. I wrote anyway. The Biggest Challenge of Being a Writer: Trying to Balance It All Later came marriage and children. I was toldContinue Reading
Introduction: Journalist Lori Tobias arrived on the Oregon coast in 2000. After freelancing from Newport for several years, she signed on with the Oregonian as a stringer then staff writer, covering the entire coast—one person for more than three hundred miles. Tobias’s story is as much her own as it is theContinue Reading
The biggest emotional challenge of being a writer is willing myself to do the writing. If I don’t just do it, I can’t accomplish any goals. So within that I guess there has to be depression, lack of motivation, anxiety, a feeling of being overwhelmed, a sort of paralysis arisingContinue Reading
When I retired from a successful dancing career back in May of 2011, I did so thoughtfully, and prayerfully. I’d been a professional dancer for twenty-six years, and I needed a change. I loved to write as a teen, but when I sat down to pen something significant, something thatContinue Reading