Posts tagged Writing Tips
Copyright and Permissions for Author-Entrepreneurs

As an author, you are expected to obey copyright law and obtain permissions as needed for your book. What does that mean, exactly? Just as you hold the copyright to your work, others hold their copyright. The exception to this is when a work is in the public domain, meaning most likely that the author of the work has died and copyright has expired. The term of copyright is defined as the life of the author plus 70 years. What do you need to know to keep yourself on the right side of copyright law?

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Word Count: How Many Words Should Your Book Be?

I know from writing a book myself, not to mention it being a hot topic during book coaching calls with clients: It’s frustrating that there is no “perfect” or even absolutely correct word count target for your book. (How can I possibly create a writing schedule or figure out how long it will take to write my book if I don’t know how many words I need?) “Enough words to cover your topic” sounds like the kind of smart-aleck answer that would’ve gotten me in trouble in high school. But it’s true.

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Making Space in Your Life to Write a Book

Most creative entrepreneurs and bloggers don’t challenge the idea that writing a book could help their business growth. They know that a book can bring credibility, visibility, and authority; a book is almost like a business card as you establish and grow your platform as an entrepreneur. Finding the time to not just write but also learning the ins and outs of book publishing are usually the sticking points that cause them to hesitate. “I’ll write a book someday” is something I hear often. I won’t lie: Committing to writing a book is huge. The process can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be if you make space for it in your life and in your business beforehand.

All told, I recommend allowing four to six months to research, write, and publish your book comfortably. Can you do it in less time? Sure. But that pace will be a bit frenetic at times, and you might not always be producing your best work. Not all of this blocked time requires you to be actively working on the book. There will be chunks of time when the manuscript is with an editor or formatter, for example. (You thought I meant you’d be writing for six months, didn’t you? You can admit it.)

Still not convinced? Let me show you how it’s possible.

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Grammar 101: Plurals and Possessives

What is it about that harmless little apostrophe that trips up so many people? People ask me often about issues regarding plurals and possessives (and especially the dreaded combo of a plural possessive!). The basic definitions are simple enough, right?

Plural signifies more than one.
Possessive signifies ownership and belonging.

Yet this is one of those often-confused aspects of English, so this week we’re going old school — as in, elementary (middle?) school English class for a quick grammar lesson. Ready?

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Creating a Writing Habit

Let’s call a spade, a spade: A book is A LOT of words. Even if you, say, blog a couple times a week, a couple thousand words at a time, you're producing 5,000 or so words a week. A book, on the other hand, is tens of thousands of words. In other words, it’s a lot more words than you’re used to writing. That said, you’re producing 5K words per week (good for you!), so you’re in good shape to build a daily writing habit. It doesn’t matter WHAT you’re writing. It just matters that you ARE writing.

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The Writing Process

Sometimes you’ll see the writing process as having four steps: writing, revising, editing, and publishing. In that scenario, prewriting is included in the writing phase. Prewriting is a separate step from writing. I cannot over-emphasize that point! If you sit down to write 50,000 (or more words) with a topic and a few key points, but nothing else, you’re in trouble. Prewriting is the legwork and preparation to make the actual writing easier and faster. So really, the writing process has 5 steps:

  1. Prewriting
  2. Drafting
  3. Revising
  4. Editing
  5. Publishing
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Shifting Your Mindset from Business Owner to Author

Almost without fail during Book Brainstorm Sessions (my version of discovery calls) and even in initial conversations with new clients, I hear this sentence: “But I’m not a writer.” That’s the point where I smile and take a breath, and we have a chat about mindset. I bet if you’re reading this blog post, you’ve had that same thought (or even said it out loud). Simply put, if you’re going to write a book, you must shift your mindset from that of a business owner writing a book to that of a writer. When you’re done writing, you can switch hats back to business owner — promise.

 

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