Michael Ehret, WritingOnTheFineLine
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With the American Christian Fiction Writers conference just around the corner, I am reminded of The Wizard of Oz. Like almost every child who grew up in the 1960s and 70s, I never missed the opportunity to watch that movie on TV. It was shown annually for almost three decades. As a result, the movie…
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In the writing world, it’s easy to become discouraged and hard to know whether what you’re doing is good enough to catch an agent’s or editor’s eye. Maybe your one-sheet isn’t Wow-ing folks like you’d hoped? Perhaps your book proposal feels leaden and you’re not sure how to fix it? A new writing contest deadline…
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“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” ― J.D. Salinger, (January 1, 1919 – January…
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Enter the Way Back Machine with me. In 2005, a newbie fiction writer (though well into a communications career as a corporate editor) wrote to the e-mail loop of American Christian Fiction Writers seeking a freelance editor to look at his manuscript, pat him on the back, and provide an immediate connection to the perfect…
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Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. – Anton Chekhov, a Russian physician, dramatist, and author Ah, the old “show, don’t tell” advice. Good advice never gets old, however. (Though some continue to rail against it.) As is often the case, Grammar Girl makes the distinctions…
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If you’re a writer who is serious about writing, you know that in order to be successful you have to be able to pitch your book—and no, I don’t mean throw it across the room in exasperation because “it’s just not working!” (Though that will likely happen, too.) Since I was rejected—actually laughed at—in a…
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Never kick a sleeping skunk. — Kelly Long’s Mom Mom’s have a lot of great advice. I’m sure we’ve all heard: Money does not grow on trees. Don’t make that face or it’ll freeze in that position. Always change your underwear; you never know when you’ll have an accident. Be careful or you’ll put your…
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My friends at Novel Rocket are taking a poll on how much you’re willing to pay for an e-book. Would love to have you participate. Here’s their introduction to the poll: As we wait to see how the law handles the charges that Apple and five publishers met to fix e-book prices, I’ve found myself…
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Today’s In The Edit is, once again, a little different. For the July issue of ACFW Journal, suspense author Mike Dellosso (also d.b.a. as Michael King) interviewed Michael Hyatt, chairman of Thomas Nelson, author of the new book Platform: Get Noticed In A Noisy World, and the keynote speaker for American Christian Fiction Writer’s upcoming…
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Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke. – F. Scott Fitzgerald, an American author of novels and short stories Laugh at your own jokes. – Neil Gaiman, an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, and graphic novels Wow. Sometimes writing advice is so contradictory.…
Writing On The Fine Line 