Over the Christmas break I got an idea for a novel I want to write. It was magic. The idea was pure energy, and I had an amazing amount of focus. It’s like I could see the whole story arc in my head: characters, complications, climax… It was all right there. Unfortunately, when I approached my…
My 5 year-old niece holds a special place in my heart. I love her. She sometimes calls me up on FaceTime during the day, and I drop everything when I get that call. We spend the next hour talking about everything. I even find myself watching her put together a puzzle on the other end…
I had a deep moment of thought the other night. I realized I was extremely content with how my projects are doing right now. I feel like they have a great amount of traffic, a great amount of income, and I’m pretty pleased with the content I’m producing. It’s funny the thought that struck me.…
I’m learning that discovering your story is a bit like searching Google. One particular story will result in thousands of details, but it’s up to me to figure out which of those details is important to the story. For instance, I’ve been writing a short story about my experience trying to get to India to…
The day my creativity died. I was working for my church. And I was starting to get tired of the arguments I was having. Staff meetings were filled with people who disagreed with me. My ideas were shot down left and right. It seemed people just weren’t getting it. So I gave up. I decided…
Realize this: We live in a world where thousands of people can instantly give you feedback on anything you do. A few years ago, you could write a book, and only the people who really hated you would take the time to write you hate mail. Now, anyone can hop on Twitter and thrash you…
I must admit. Wednesday’s blog post was sort of phoned in. It was actually a chapter from an unpublished manuscript. I posted it because I couldn’t think of anything to post on Wednesday. Before I made the decision, I was wracking my brain trying to think of something I could write about. How did I…
Stop. Pick one. You can either (1) defend your idea to everyone you encounter, or you can (2) act on your idea. Unless you’re one of the characters from Twilight, you probably won’t have enough time or energy to do both. We all have jobs, families, and responsibilities. And chances are, your dream has to…
I swear I’m getting classically conditioned to feel rage every time I hear smooth jazz. Seriously. The only time I ever listen to smooth jazz is when I’m on hold with a poorly run company that’s making me wait while they figure out why they screwed up. Wednesday morning I was on hold with HostGator, my…
I’ve found the most successful things I do have incredible focus. Think about it. ChurchStageDesignIdeas.com. I’m not sure I could get more specific than that. And that’s by far the most successful website I run. The next most successful is another incredibly focused project. I find that whenever I try to incorporate all of my…