Take One Small Action

It's easy to doubt the effectiveness of one more small action toward a goal. Here's a light-hearted reminder that setting one thing in motion can make a difference. Thanks to Michael Lindsay of Inform Creative Services for sending this cheerful burst of creativity.


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My Big Bold Sale

In honor of our recession, I'm having my first-ever sale. Here's the deal:


I’m offering a June-only reduced fee for all my manuscript and consulting services for writers.

I've cut my rates by 40% for the next four weeks.

For critiques on manuscripts, fiction and nonfiction, and for consultations on the writing business, I’m charging 40% off the rates listed on my website. Minimums are also lowered 40%.

Writers I've worked with as clients have published with major book houses including Simon & Schuster, Wiley, Workman, and St. Martin's, as well as smaller presses, literary journals, magazines (Gourmet, Newsweek) and newspapers. (Results not typical)

Feel free to tell your students, colleagues, and writer friends about this one-time opportunity for ridiculously low-cost, high-quality literary criticism. A recession is no time to hold back on creativity.

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Small Town Grace?

Walking up to a stranger at a gathering and starting a conversation takes a little psychic effort for a lot of us.

Yesterday, I saw that done repeatedly as if it were as effortless as checking email.

I was at a funeral at a Baptist Church in the little town of Buies Creek in eastern North Carolina. As I paused in the narthex after the service, and later at the lunch in an assembly room, people one after another came up to me and introduced themselves, explained how they knew the family, how they were related, and so on.

They did it so gracefully that I began to develop a theory: that they were all members of the congregation and this was their Sunday morning practice with visitors. That's true in churches I've attended, but I've never been the one to go over and speak to the stranger. Here the greeting habit seemed culture-wide.

It was very nice. I felt welcomed and engaged; the greetings turned easily into interesting brief conversations. These encounters did not seem dutiful. Each chat seemed motivated by genuine interest and good nature. (This doesn't happen to me everywhere I go, and I did not spark it by wearing a funny hat.)

It made me feel like leaving some walls down and seeing what happens.



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