ARE YOU WRITING FOR A CHANGE?Written by Mary Anne Hahn
Whenever you reach one of those writer's roadblocks, it helps to take some time to reexamine what drives you to write in first place.I submit, however, that regardless of your reason(s) for being, or wanting to be, a writer, or what kinds of writing you do, there is only one, true underlying motivator that will consistently send you back to your keyboard, or prompt you to pick up a pen, day after day: through your writing, you must want to change something. If you don't, I believe you'll remain stuck. "No, I don't," you might say. "I write because I want to make money." That might very well be true. But think about it--*why* do you want to make money as a writer? To leave your unfulfilling day job? To supplement your income so that you can travel more, or redecorate your house? To enable you to support your children through college, or your parents during old age? Note that all of these purposes for making money provide you with fiscal ability to make changes in your life, hopefully for better. Change is goal, not money. "Well, I write fiction. I write solely to entertain." And what happens to your readers if you succeed in entertaining them? You make them feel--you get them to laugh, cry or wonder. You send spine- tingling shivers of fear through them with your thrillers, warm them with your romance stories, entice them with your mysteries, leave indelible imprints on their memories with your characters. You change your readers; how they think or feel after they have read something you've written differs from how they thought or felt before.
| | Parts is PartsWritten by Peggy Hazelwood
When you write a book, or even a report or paper, sometimes a detailed plan can make all difference between doing a thorough, well thought out job and making a mish mash of all parts and pieces. Presenting a simple, easy-to-follow book will allow your readers to concentrate on what you're saying instead of struggling with following parts of book. Open any nonfiction, how to book and follow along with these parts. Most of them are found in most books: Cover Front Matter - includes some or all of these parts: Title page, Copyright page, Dedication page, Preface, Introduction, Table of Contents. Title Page - includes same information as cover but in a word processed version, usually without graphics. The page number for Title Page is Roman numeral one (i), but page number does not appear on this page. The back of Title Page is page number Roman numeral two (ii), but again it's not numbered. It is blank. Copyright, Dedication pages, etc. - continue numbering using Roman numerals, front and back. Again, these pages are unnumbered. Preface or Introduction - if applicable, add Preface or Introduction here and use next Roman numeral available and begin numbering pages. That is, page numbers first appear here if you have a Preface or Introduction that is part of Front Matter.
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