• Writing Books Designed for Writers

    The challenge of writing is what I love the most. No writer is ever perfect. No book is ever perfect. And no matter how seasoned you are as a writer, there is always something new to learn about writing. There are hundreds of books to help writers grow and expand in their craft. Choosing the right book can be a daunting task in itself, so we’ve compiled a list of recommendations for faith-based, nonfiction, and fiction writing help books. Writing Reference Books for Faith-Based Genre The Art of Spiritual Writing: The most common advice I give new spiritual writers is that what…

  • Tips For Writing a Book (and finishing it).

    As you may have experienced by now, once you start writing a book (or go back to finish one) you will come across self-doubt, indecision, and many more obstacles. Realizing this ahead of time and planning for those hurdles will help warrant you won’t quit on your writing project when they surface. We’ve compiled a list of tips to help keep you on track to finish that book.  1. Hold yourself accountable. If you want to finish this book you have to start by holding yourself accountable. Know that the finishing of writing a book falls on nobody but yourself.…

  • How to Create a Visual Experience in Your Writing

    When writing, it’s so easy to get bogged down with dialogue, plot lines, verb tense, and comma placement. We can get so caught up with that we can forget to push our creative boundaries. Becoming fixated on punctuation can cause our descriptions to go flat. Other times, we may avoid using symbolism in writing because it feels too advanced for the current writing level. It’s easy to stick to what you know. If your manuscript is starting to feel like dialogue mixed in with a bunch of bland back story, give symbolism, description, and color a try. Here are our…

  • 10 Words to Cut From Your Manuscript

    Editing your own writing will never be the easiest part of the writing journey, but knowing what to look for can make the task a whole lot simpler. Working with the publishing company Xulon Press for a decade now has taught me a lot to say the least. A common mistake my editing eye has picked up on is what I like to call the use of filler words. Excessive use of these words elongates your manuscript but does not advance your story.  As a rule of thumb, avoid using words that end in -ly, such as quickly, readily, suddenly,…