• Commonly Misused Words—and How to Avoid Them

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    We’ve all been there, whether we’re thumb-typing a text (curse you, autocorrect!), drafting a resume, or sending an email to our boss: after hitting “send” we realize we’ve misusing a word that has a doppelganger with a completely different meaning. Just as this happens regularly in everyday communication, commonly misused words regularly litter the pages of the manuscripts that hit our desks (or ping our inboxes). Examples of commonly misused words While editing manuscripts, I like to keep a running list of both cringeworthy and humorous misused words. In recent history, I’ve come across the following incidents: Passed rather than…

  • Writing Tips for Poets

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    Here at Xulon Press, we regularly see wonderful collections of devotional and creative poetry. Poetry is an art form that pours from the heart, encompassing a wide range of passions, from joy and thanksgiving to sorrow and grief. While poetry is both beloved and reviled, many readers feel uncertain about how to interact with such a subjective genre. Poets themselves often struggle with the balance between artistic license and necessary structure when penning their poems. To help navigate these difficulties, we have a few basic poetry tips for how to write and publish your best poetic work. Clarifying Your Intentions…

  • Your target audience matters! Follow along as we go into the reasons why.

    Why Your Target Audience Matters

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    You’ve done it! You’ve written your book and have committed to publishing it. You’re probably excited to share the final product with the whole world. Well, maybe not the entire world, but your target audience is definitely all Christian readers, right? Think again. Believe it or not, many authors enter the publishing process with their target audience focused on Christian readers of all ages. In other words, people ranging from elementary school to the nursing home. This wide range of potential readers doesn’t help when crafting the book’s content and marketing efforts to the right readers. Limitation is actually a good thing. One important step is defining the target…

  • The Power and Danger of Observation

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    Writers continually take in the world around them, cataloguing sights, sounds, smells, and other sensations. They observe their environment with deep curiosity and awe, recording the minutiae of the unique scenes that unfold around them every day. Watching a conversation between lovers, a mother scolding her child, or a man walking alone at night can become the building blocks of a great story. But it’s easy for us as writers to overextend our power of observation as we write. Before we know it, we are stuffing each sentence and paragraph to the seams with moment-by-moment synopses, doggedly reporting every square…