No matter how you slice it, writing a book is a big, long, complex job. Most first-time writers assume that once they finish their draft manuscript, the heavy lifting is complete. All they have to do is wait for their publisher to put a few things together, and they’ll have a beautiful book in their … Read more
Writing dialogue seems like it would be so easy. We talk all the time, right? How hard could it be to just write it down? But it takes a little more than that to make dialogue seem real. Frequently, the dialogue we imagine for our characters sounds stilted or overly formal. That’s partly because, when … Read more
One of the first things I learned when I first opened KN Literary arts is that the term “ghostwriter” has a realllllllly bad rep. I would be chatting with prospective clients, and the same publishing obstacles would come up: Not enough time to write a whole book or proposal Not confident in the writing process … Read more
When we think of writing, we often think of the sexy parts. The inspiration of the muse! The poetic prose, flowing on the page! The readers whose lives are about to change! While all that’s well and good, the truth is there’s nothing sexy about the butt-in-chair time required to actually write that book. If … Read more
Recently I was chatting with a new friend of mine, a teacher and leader in her field, about the fact that I help birth books for a living. She covered her face in her hands and said, in a muffled voice, “Oh dear. I’m supposed to be writing a book!” She was embarrassed to admit … Read more
Both these terms point to a similar genre: Books about one’s own life, written from one’s own perspective. Yet the word “autobiography” points toward a biographical summary of one’s life, written by oneself. It generally begins at birth and continues through the present day, recording one’s accomplishments and failures, trials and successes, over a long … Read more
I love it when one of the “hard and fast” rules I teach is elegantly altered by an encounter with great piece of art. Such was my experience watching Zhang Yang’s remarkable film “Paths of the Soul” last night at the Dairy Center theater here in Boulder. This movie begins with a rare window into … Read more
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