There are three facets of book publishing: writing the book, producing the book, and promoting the book. This final step of marketing is one that most authors would just as soon skip. But if people are to read what we write, we must promote our work. Here are some articles about marketing to help with […]
Category: Writing and Publishing
Writing and publishing articles by author Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD
My friend, an auto-mechanic, shared a story about his co-worker who was assigned a difficult repair that should have taken twenty-two hours, but it took him much longer. The next time the same job came in, he volunteered for it, this time finishing it quicker. Soon, every one of these repairs went to him. Each […]
Grammar is my weakness. It seems I switched schools at the wrong time and missed foundational instruction. I never did catch up, struggling with it to this day. As such, Grammarly, the online grammar checker, has intrigued me. Finally, I made time to check it out. According to the site, “Grammarly is an automated proofreader […]
Last year I took an online writing course from Jeff Goins. It’s called Tribe Writers. It was the most significant thing I did all year to grow as a writer. I enjoyed it so much, I took the class again to make sure I didn’t miss a thing. Then I took it a third time. […]
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…and sometimes
I remember a substitute teacher in second grade. She was determined to instruct us, not merely maintain order, as the usual goal of our fill-in educators. She asked what letters were vowels. “A, E, I, O, and U” we shouted in unison. “And sometimes…?” she encouraged us. “Y” we called out. She repeated her last […]
I once read a local newspaper column by a copy editor claiming he uncovered a grammatical phenomenon, seemingly unique to southwestern Michigan: the habit of folks swapping the words “bring” and “take.” Indeed, I am guilty, forever “bringing” when I should be “taking” and “taking” what I should be “bringing.” At various times in my […]
November is National Novel Writing Month, “NaNoWriMo” for short. NaNoWriMo encourages writers to crank out the first draft of a novel in the month of November, a mere 30 days. This starts in less than two weeks. (Don’t complain about not having enough advance warning, because I mentioned this eleven and a half months ago. […]
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Why Do I Write?
My Answer in Haiku Linking letters and wielding words to create art for God, my patron [This poem was selected as a finalist for the literary publication Imagine This! An ArtPrize Anthology, published in the fall of 2013.]
This year, marks my sixth year of blogging, with my original blog, Musings, still online, although I’ve moved it a few times. Lately, however, it hasn’t had much activity, with my focus shifting to my other blogs. Over the years, Musings has had various taglines; here are the ones I remember: Musings have over 500 […]
The new reality in book publishing is that authors need to promote their own books. This is true for both self-published and traditionally published authors. Yes, traditional publishers may make some efforts to market your book, but the bulk of the work falls to the author; publishers expect this, and writers need to accept this. […]