As a magazine publisher, I edit every submission I receive. Yes, every single one. (And then a proofreader fixes everything I miss.) Though some submissions are in much better shape than others, each one receives some changes. In fifteen years, I’ve never ever accepted a submission without making at least a few edits. I may […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Whenever I make a phone call, I watch what happens; it’s an occupational hazard. Often what I witness provides fodder for a column or blog post. So, based on personal experience, here are some ways you can either amaze or annoy your patients and callers: Interactive Voice Response: Most people […]
Have you ever said or thought any of the following? While these may appear as cautious statements to protect us from disappointment, they are really lies that conspire to hold us back from embracing the writer within. While we are all writers to one degree or another, if we’ve ever been the least bit intentional […]
As writers, we can construct a faultless sentence, one that is technically correct in every way, a complete phrase that displays impeccable punctuation and possesses unassailable grammar. Yet, accomplishing this doesn’t guarantee the results will be understandable. Sometimes we can follow all the rules of sentence construction and fail to communicate. If readers don’t know […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD I’ve been involved in buying over a dozen telephone answering services. While some parts of the transition were fun to plan and easy to handle, the employee aspect was always the hardest. Despite my hard work to successfully integrate new operators into our existing workforce, they often thwarted my best […]
I thought it might be fun to start the New Year by sharing our writing accomplishments from last year. I’d go first, and you could add yours in the comment section. Just as quickly I realized that was a bad idea. We are all at different points with our writing, having different goals and expectations, […]
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Call Center Fiasco
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD It’s Black Friday; Big Box Store advertises smartphones for a dollar. After standing in line for over an hour, we learn that because I have a business plan, they can’t sell us phones. However, all we need to do is change to an individual plan, and they send us to […]
I call myself a recovering perfectionist. Over time, I’ve learned its strengths, such as it propels me to produce quality work. I’ve also learned its weaknesses, such as a tendency to procrastinate or, even worse, to do nothing. I tap into its strengths and guard against its weaknesses. With this knowledge, I moved from being […]
Here are the ten most popular posts about book publishing in 2014. The comments are still open, so feel free to add to the discussion. Thank you for reading these posts and following this blog. May you move your next book closer to publication in 2015. Which post is your favorite? What one would you […]
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Top Writing Posts for 2014
Here are the most popular posts on Byline for 2014. The comments are still open, so feel free to add to the discussion. Thank you for reading these posts and following this blog. May your writing improve and your career advance in the coming year.