Think of the last time you made air travel arrangements. You probably researched airlines, flight schedules, and fares. You also carefully packed your luggage and toiletries with all the new security requirements in mind. Despite your preparations, however, the trip...
Is it possible to miss God’s answers to prayer? I often fail to recognize the relationship between God’s providence and answers to prayer. As a result, I miss opportunities to give God glory for His work. I also miss opportunities to encourage others by sharing...
Ava Pennington equips Christian writers with four important principles for handling God’s Word accurately.
Are You Independent? Fireworks begin in my neighborhood way before July 4th. But I wonder if some revelers are more interested in making noise than in celebrating the anniversary of our nation’s independence. Independence. It’s in our country’s DNA. As American...
Have you ever followed instructions – doing exactly what you were told to do – and failed miserably or had the whole thing blow up in your face? Or maybe you went out of your way to help someone else, having the purest motives, only for them to end up in a worse...
Six years of upstairs and downstairs entanglements and drama. Six years of pomp and circumstance. Six years of loyalties and betrayals. Six years of secrets and celebrations. All ending in 2016 at the end of season six. But it didn’t end there. Downton Abbey, the...
Our Devotional Master Class has come and gone, but you can still access these posts about writing Devotionals for adults and children. Jarm Del Boccio started us out by writing Tips for Writing Kids and Teens Devotionals. Ava Pennington wrote about her devotional, The...
The gorgeous cover of her new devotional, Reflections on the Names of God, beckons us to open and discover the depth and breadth of God’s character revealed in His manifold names.
Ten years ago, I wrote a devotional on the names of God—my first published book, released in hardcover by Revell of Baker Publishing Group. It was also just the beginning. Shortly after that, Revell published a special print run with a proprietary cover for a large...
We know Jesus promised His Spirit would live in His followers. But what role does the Holy Spirit have in our writing? Join me in examining some familiar Bible verses from a writer’s perspective: The Holy Spirit is always with us (Jn. 14:16) Ever feel as if your...
What Gift Can Writers Bring for the Newborn King? Music is an important part of celebrating Christmas. Remember the Christmas song, “The Little Drummer Boy”? It’s about a little boy who wonders what gift he could give to the baby Jesus. Or how about “We Three Kings,”...
Of course, the Person I am thankful first for is our Lord Jesus Christ--our Prophet, Priest, and King! Second, I'm thankful for my family, friends, and the wonderful fellowship of believers I am a part of every Lord's Day. Third, I'm thankful for the team of...
It’s easy to be thankful for an agent’s representation or signing with a publishing house. But as we consider the ABCs of thankfulness in our writing life, let’s be more creative than that!
Are you feeling “buried” or “planted” when it comes to your writing journey?
What difference does it make?
5 Reasons to Join a Writing Community Are you a member of a writing community? I’m not talking about attending a writers’ conference. Are you part of a writing critique group or other professional organization that meets at least once a month? If you are, then you...
Examining 6 common mistakes authors make in trying to grow their email list. How many of these are you guilty of?
Trust When You Can't See the Way Forward by Ava Pennington Ever feel as if you’re writing plans have gone off track? Maybe you’ve decided there’s no point in having writing goals since none of them have come to fruition. What do you do if your writing life is not...
Create Free and Easy Videos for Social Media Using Lumen5 videos (Note: This is an update of a previous Write2Ignite post.) Ever feel like Sisyphus? In Greek mythology, the gods punished Sisyphus for his greed and deceit by assigning an impossible task. They required...
Have you ever experienced disappointment? Silly question, isn’t it? Because we’ve all been disappointed at one time or another. We live in a broken, sin-sick world. Disappointment is part of the package. But it’s not the only part. I know. Because I’ve lived this out....
This month marks the 106th anniversary of the first electric traffic system installed in Cleveland, Ohio in 1914. Four sets of red and green lights told drivers when to stop and go. The Cleveland Automobile Club praised the system, saying they expected that it was...
God lays out the Key to REAL Success ’Tis the season of graduations…and graduation speeches. And almost every speech will encourage the graduates in their pursuit of success. Let’s face it. No one wakes up thinking, today I will strive to be a failure. Yet we often...
Think back to the resolutions or goals you set in January. Less than 5 months ago, yet it feels like years have passed! Did you write them down? Do you remember what they were…or would you rather forget? How well have you done with your goals? Perhaps you haven’t...
Waiting is hard for most of us. And right now most of us are practicing some form of “sheltering in place” to distance ourselves from COVID-19 as we wait for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to fade away. Whether it’s waiting out COVID-19 or waiting for a writing-related project,...
When a friend had successful cancer surgery, she joyfully announced the results, along with her conclusion that God is good. And the social media responses were positive and predictable: Yes, God is good! God truly answers prayer! God really loves you! God is...
When I was 14 years old, I won the grand prize in a contest: a set of encyclopedias. I know—not very exciting, is it? But this was in the ancient days before computers, personal or otherwise. You’d have thought I won London’s crown jewels! I was so proud of that...
A pastor-friend once preached a message on how to leave a legacy. Legacies were on his mind because he had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. He had been thinking a lot about his own legacy, which in turn motivated me to think about mine. I wasn’t sure I...
Each of us has been called to serve our mighty God in a unique way. But we can become too busy fulfilling our call that we only focus on the “doing.” We want to do better—to write well, to teach effectively, to do whatever we’ve been called to do to the best of our...
Write2Ignite 2019 is history, but now your work begins! We hope you're primed and ready to tackle a new project or pull out an old one that needs editing and polishing. No matter how well we write, we all need someone with an objective perspective to critique our...
I was excited when my first book, Daily Reflections on the Names of God, was published several years ago. But my delight at the release of this project was tempered by the need to market it through a website, blog posts, newsletters, Facebook author page, Twitter,...
Platform. We hear it so often we want to scream, “Enough, already!” Yes, we know we need a growing platform. It’s why we spend hours on social media, trying to grow our lists of friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter and Instagram. And it’s why we wrack our brain...
If you’re like me, you probably have bookshelves crammed with books. Too many to keep and too precious to give away. As I look through my bookcases, I enjoy finding a long-forgotten treasure. Even better, on occasion I’ll make a new discovery—a book that made it onto...
Ever feel like Sisyphos? In Greek mythology, the gods punished Sisyphos for his greed and deceit by assigning an impossible task. He had to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down when it reached near the top. And he had to do it for eternity....
I’m usually an optimistic person, but lately it’s become more and more difficult for me to muster optimism as I read the newspaper or watch the evening news. Even my Facebook and Twitter feeds are not immune to the avalanche of bad news. Headlines and links are posted...
People often ask me why I write. I keep hearing that this is the worst possible time to enter the world of publishing. Book sales are at an all-time low, despite the fact that by some estimates, more than two million books are published annually worldwide. I also keep...
How is a Christian writer different from other writers? How is a Christian plumber different from other plumbers? How is a Christian salesperson different from other salespeople? Are you a Christian writer, a writer who writes for the Christian market, a Christian who...
The calendar tells us that it's time for the seasons to change again. Still, beyond winter, spring, summer, and fall, we experience other seasons, too. We move through seasons of life as we parent babies and teenagers, experience empty nests, and become caregivers for...
Writing can sometimes be discouraging work. It may become even more discouraging when we’ve poured ourselves into our calling but no one seems to notice our efforts. Or maybe we’ve worked and worked . . . but someone else gets the break we’ve been waiting for. As...
Ahhh, summertime. There’s something about taking a road trip in the summer, convertible top down, wind in our hair. It brings out the teenager in all of us. Of course, I don’t have a convertible, but I can dream, can’t I? The drives in my dreams almost always include...
Nobody likes to be rejected. And when we’ve poured ourselves into a writing project, only to see it rejected by agents and editors, it’s easy to take that rejection personally. "My manuscript isn’t good enough." "My writing skills aren’t good enough." "I’m not good...
Last month I talked about how to plan a physical book launch party. This month, let’s discuss how to host a virtual (online) book launch party using social media. You can plan a virtual party in place of a physical party, especially if finances are tight. Or your...
You’ve done it. You’ve published a book. Now comes the hard part. Marketing. You’ll be posting, tweeting, blogging, and talking about your book to anyone who’ll listen. But have you considered planning a party? A book launch party will create buzz for your book, give...
We all want to be successful writers. But how do we define success? A recent search for the word “success” in the Amazon books category yielded 266,470 results. At the click of a button, more than a quarter of a million books available today on how to become...
Have you made personal new year’s resolutions for this year? If you did, now that we’re two weeks into 2018, how many resolutions have you kept? Have you set any new year’s resolutions for your writing? It’s not too late. Here are a few resolutions for you to...
Show; don’t tell. We hear it all the time. Don’t tell the reader, show the reader. Draw readers into your story. Make it easy for them to feel as if they're in the middle of whatever you’re writing. Prompted by a recent series of blog posts on the Hartline Literary...
Last month, we talked about the importance of identifying and removing clichés from our writing. This month, let’s tackle Christianese. What is Christianese? Christianese phrases are Christian clichés. They form an insider language that is often overused, misused, and...
We hear them so frequently that we’re often oblivious to their presence. But if we want our writing to make an impact in this day and age, in the final analysis, we must think outside the box and avoid clichés like the plague or our writing will be behind the eight...
It’s been said writers include a bit of themselves in everything they write. If that’s true, how much of your personality appears on the pages of what you write? Teaching on temperament or personality differences has been around for more than 2,000 years. Hippocrates...
When you jostle a full glass of orange juice, what spills out? And what spills out of a full glass of milk? Silly questions? Maybe. Of course, orange juice will spill out of the first glass and milk will spill out of the second one. But perhaps not so silly when we...
These days, Facebook is the social media platform everyone loves to hate. It seems as if this Internet giant changes its rules as often as we change our clothes. But Facebook is still a social media powerhouse for a reason: millions of people use it to establish...
Do you know the answer to this old riddle? Q: Which weighs more: a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers? A: Neither. They both weigh the same. Silly, I know. But I’ve been thinking a lot about weight lately. And no, this has nothing to do with the pants I no...
I love a good story, don’t you? Skilled storytellers have beguiled audiences with mesmerizing tales since the dawn of time. I have vivid memories of waiting breathlessly for stories that began with the words, “Once upon a time.…” I’m still transported by the power of...
Have you heard the story of the little girl and her pearls? There once was a little girl who went shopping with her mother and saw a strand of costume jewelry pearls. Oh, how she wanted those pearls! But her mother wouldn’t provide the money to buy them, so she saved...
When I worked as a Human Resources executive, one of my responsibilities was to offer outplacement training---a fancy term for helping people who lost their jobs find new employment. Outplacement training included creating a resume, polishing interview skills, and...
If you’ve chosen writing for the purpose of making your fortune, you’ve picked the wrong career. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we can’t earn money from writing and writing-related activities. So now that we’ve dealt with this hard truth and you haven’t stopped...
I was twenty years old the first time I traveled by airplane. (Yes, I know, I had a deprived childhood. 🙂 ). Not only was it my first plane trip, it was also my honeymoon. I should mention my husband was a veteran traveler. You can imagine the scene. I had a window...
We're naturally drawn to the power of a good story. It starts at a young age, doesn’t it? Jack and Jill and other nursery rhymes. Aesop’s Fables and fairy tales. Frights around a campfire and happily-ever-after bedtime stories. Jesus understood the power of a story....
School has been in session in the United States for more than a month. This means that all across the country, children are facing the same question that has been asked for generations: "What did you learn today?" To my mother’s utter frustration, I’d often answer her...
Are you familiar with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) syndrome? It’s a genetic illness that strips people of their immune system. They're vulnerable to infectious diseases that aren't a problem for most of the general population. As a result, those who suffer...
What do you pray for your writing? You might think that’s a silly question. Of course we pray for our writing. But what, exactly, are we praying for? If we’re honest, our prayers are often centered on requests for favor with agents and publishers. Book contracts,...
“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” ~ Stephen King I don’t like the horror genre (it gives me nightmares), so I’m not a fan of Stephen King. But when he’s right, he’s right. Romance writers read romance....
You’ve written a terrific blog post. Next step is to scour the Internet for the right photo to accompany your post. But just as our writing is copyright-protected, so are many of the photos we find on the Internet. So where can you find appropriate photos that are...
10,000 hours. That’s the amount of intentional practice Dr. K. Anders Ericsson determined is needed to master a skill. He published his findings in the Harvard Business Review in 2007. Author Malcolm Gladwell popularized those findings in his book, Outliers , in...
As I write this, it’s raining. At least my lawn and flowerbeds are happy. Is it raining where you are? I don’t mean the weather. Is it raining on your writing? Are you familiar with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “The Rainy Day”? The day is cold, and dark, and...
In my previous career as a human resources executive, one of my areas of responsibility was the management of our quality control programs. Phrases such as “Quality First,” “Do it right the first time,” and “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking” (Henry...
Conventional wisdom tells us that to be successful we should become adept at planning. Good planning helps us manage resources and minimize unexpected challenges. But life doesn’t always work out as we planned. We pour ourselves into a manuscript, but agents and...
New year, new calendar. I love the potential of a brand new calendar, don’t you? All those pristine pages with their empty little boxes…well, they started out pristine when I unwrapped the cellophane. But they’re filling up quickly! As I look back on the past year, I...
They say the life of a writer is lonely. That’s true in some ways, but the advent of the Internet has connected us in ways we could never have imagined. It has also made research easier than ever. However, easier is not always better. We’ve all heard warnings about...
When was the last time you played on a seesaw? Maybe you called it a teeter-totter. The fun lasted only as long as the person on the other end weighed about the same as you. Enough of an imbalance and you either spent most of the time camped on the ground or hanging...
The publishing industry is moving faster than Doc Brown’s DeLorean, but not always in a good way. Stagnant sales, corporate restructurings, e-publishing, people reading less…the news can be discouraging. So what’s an author to do? One thing we should not do is...
Have you ever seen an unattractive baby? Even if you think the baby is ugly, his parents would never agree. That baby is part of them. He carries their DNA. More than that, he carries their hopes and dreams for the future. It’s often been said that for a writer,...
You’ve had your drivers’ license for longer than you’d care to admit. By now, you’ve learned a thing or two about the rules of the road. Did you know that Twitter rules of the road are similar? 1. Don’t drive without a license. No matter how much you may hate your...
I was nev er much of a numbers person. Words are more my thing. Lots and lots of words, if you ask my husband! Numbers . . . not so much. It’s one of the reasons I love to write. To be able to communicate using myriad combinations of a mere twenty-six letters is...
Once upon a time I was the Vice President of Human Resources for an international insurance company. The corporate rat race consumed all my energies. Writing for publication was a vague dream that belonged to another life – a life far removed from my reality. Twenty...
I seem to have misplaced something. Actually two somethings. Can anyone tell me where 2014 went? To make matters worse, January 2015 disappeared, too. There were so many things I wanted to accomplish last year. Things I didn’t get to because I was distracted with too...