How do you know if there is an audience for a book about a topic that you want to write about? After you spend months writing a book, how will you know that there will be readers to buy it? Steve Scott, whose series of habit books consistently put him at the top of the…
Archives for February 2018
3 Lessons from How We Learn by Benedict Carey
I just finished reading Benedict Carey’s book, How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens. Here are the the three biggest lessons I learned about learning from the book: 1) Pre-testing is a form of learning. As a teacher and even now as someone who works with teachers, I looked…
Should I use initials as an author pen name?
A number of authors use their initials instead of their full name on the covers of their books. It is especially common among authors of fiction. So, when considering whether to use my initials instead of my first name for works of fiction, I wanted to do some quick research. Here are a few reasons…
Author Ken Liu on Goal Setting
While I am reading a book, I like to listen to and read interviews with the authors to find their advice on writing and the lessons they have learned about being authors. So, after I read the short story, “Paper Menagerie,” I went looking for interviews with the author Ken Liu. I found his writing…
Leo Tolstoy’s “Two Brothers and the Gold”
I didn’t expect while reading a set of short stories as research for writing my own short stories, that the stories themselves would give me any epiphanal moments. My only intention was to read to learn how to structure the stories and develop the characters and settings. But, of course, God had different plans. I…
