We've just published a new edition of our newsletter! You can check it out on our website and get the latest information from The Best Word Ghostwriting & Editing Service. Let us know what you think! Read It Now Here ...read more

    Writer's block – it can be likened to your favorite pen running out of ink. The writer smoothly fills the page with prose. It rolls easily from brain to hand, till suddenly, nothing is forthcoming. The hand continues to try to write, but the page remains blank. The ideas have apparently dried up. It may be that your hero is locked into such a tight situation that the author cannot figure out any way to free him. Or, your internal editor has turned on and declared that as the first part of your story is so perfect, nothing that follows could be worthy of completing the masterpiece. Changes in the author's life, and occasionally lack of change in the author's life, have caused the ideas to dry up.     This is not a fatal condition. It does not mean that you aren't a writer. On the contrary, it means that you are being tested by the muse. Every writer who has believed that the words he so diligently places on paper could be of value to anyone but himself experiences this phenomenon.     Because there are many causes for writer's block, there is no simple answer for getting past it. Mark Twain was said to have left one of his most famous novels sit for nearly twenty years before he had the courage to go back to it, to revise what he had written and finish the story.     Most of us don't have that sort of patience. We need to see results immediately. The contracts we have with our publishers are not as gentle as the ones Twain negotiated with his publishers – unless we are self publishing. We expect that we should be able to produce on demand, often forgetting that the muse may not be ready to let her pitcher of creativity flow into our brain until the proverbial eleventh hour, when the piece we are working on must go out. One hour, or perhaps if you are lucky, two hours before you must send the piece off to your editor, the words flow forth again. Often those last two hours are the most creative hours you will ever experience as a writer. Do not despair. ...read more

We've just published a new edition of our newsletter! You can check it out on our website and get the latest information from The Best Word Ghostwriting & Editing Service. Let us know what you think! Read It Now Here ...read more

The economy has not been kind. As we all know, jobs are disappearing, and they aren't coming back. The volume of Christmas sales that kept many small businesses going in the past has dropped considerably. So, what do we do to grow our businesses? This small business owner believes we should do what people have done down through the ages. We learn to work together and take care of each other, because anyone whose business is going under cannot buy goods and services from anyone else. We are all in it together. Once upon a time, farmers and tradesmen would come together once a week to haggle over the relative value of one person's services as apposed to someone else's eggs and cheese. Granted, trading communities are difficult to maintain, as once you have traded your services for someone else's, you cannot pay the rent or the tax man. So, we need to rethink the model in a creative way, analyzing what has and has not worked, and combining the best of a number of systems, perhaps including the use of an alternative currency that could be exchanged for hard money. I believe there is much to think about and much to discuss. ...read more

    For a writer, writing her own blog is almost as difficult as it is for a hairdresser to take care of her own hair. She does it for everyone else all day long, and when it comes time for her to sit down to fill out her own blogs, her mind is already awash with flotsam from the day - or should I say, emptied of all the flotsam - and there is nothing left to say.     I could speak here of the difficulties of getting published by one of the bit three or four publishers in this country, but I know I have said those things before, elsewhere. I could speak of the hours I have been spending for one of my clients, looking for an agent, sifting through the numbers of lists I have access to, in order to find those agents who have been recommended by other writers, and who have recently sold books similar to the one I helped my client put together. Because, if the agent has not sold a book similar to the one you have written, chances are he will not be interested in selling your book.     Then I could speak of the hours I have spent putting together individual packets for each of the agents I believe would be worth querying. I say individual, because each agency has their own format that they want to writer to follow for a book query or proposal. They are fighting against the trend that many writers have followed of going to a company that puts identical packages together for him to send out to all the agencies. These places charge perhaps $600 for the packet, and it is almost guaranteed that the agencies will turn them down.     I have been debating on what to charge my client for the work I have put into his project, so far. $600 would not begin to cover it, no matter how little I say I'm charging per hour. But you see I am doing this because I believe in the book I have written for him. It's an excellent book.     This process taken longer than I would have liked, because I have also taken on another large client, and I cannot afford to fall behind schedule at this stage in her project. So, I work between ten and twenty hours a day on these projects, but because I work for myself, I get to pick and choose which of the twenty-four they will be! ...read more

    Writing is a habit, one that you build up over time, until your day feels as though it is wasted unless you have spent hours hours with pen and notebook, and in front of your computer, putting words to thoughts and organizing them so that they make sense. So that you can make sense of the world.     Writing is emotional therapy, probably the cheapest therapy around. The good therapist encourages you to get in touch with your feelings, and to learn how to express them in ways that are not only not destructive, but helpful to the situations you live with. Writing, building up characters in your stories, compels you to plumb the depths of your emotions, to realize just how you would feel in the situation you have made for your character. After all, if you can't feel it, you won't be able to make your readers feel it.     This not only applies to fiction, but to biography and memoirs as well.     The Ghostwriter puts her life experience into your story. Like the good actor, she knows how to use her life experiences to make yours come across to your readers. ...read more