Has your church, local charity, PTA, or Homeowners’ Association thought of writing a community cookbook? It’s a great fundraiser, brings people together as they talk about the recipes they’ve contributed, and expands the culinary repertoire of all who buy a copy.

Fellow authors—I’m talking to you. How is 2020 going to be different for you than all the years that preceded it? It’s not just a new year but the start of a new decade. Make that decade rollover a memorable one by making a major change or two in your writing career.

Any time something in your life needs changing is a good time to take steps, but the start of a new year is a particularly appropriate time to make that change.

It’s Christmas! Did you get the gifts you wanted? Did you give people—your kids, if you have kids, your significant other, whoever else is on your gift list—what they wanted? Do you know what people REALLY want—your kids, your significant other, your other relatives, your friends? Do you know what they really want from you, whether they’re on your Christmas gift list or not?

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Not everyone does. (I don’t.) And many of those who do make resolutions find that by the middle of February, if not the middle of January, they’ve broken several if not all of them.

People have fallen for much more outlandish beliefs than this one. In fact, there’s a site online called Snopes.com that made its reputation by debunking all the false and misleading stories that circulate, occasionally by word of mouth but predominantly on the internet. But did you know—can you believe—there was a time when people believed you could catch all manner of diseases, including some deadly ones, by borrowing books from the library!

“You’ve got a typo in your first paragraph,” I said to the friend whose manuscript I was glancing at. “The editor will fix it,” he said with a shrug. “That’s what editors are for.”

I turned down a gig recently. The prospective client had inquired if I could edit a screenplay, and I said yes. But what he sent me was a season’s worth of log lines for a SF/F TV series. I’m in no way knowledgeable about SF/F. Not in novels or screenplays or teleplays or any other format. I didn’t feel qualified to critique, or try to improve on, his log lines. With regret, I declined the assignment. I don’t write grant proposals either. They’re a specialized format that I’m not conversant with, and when someone approaches me to ask if I’ll...

This week I want to address my fellow writers, and I want to ask them a question: Do you know what book you want to write next?

When I was a kid, “made-up” stories had two meanings: 1. Fiction. Stories that weren’t true; they were made up. 2. Stories devised by the storyteller. They didn’t come from a book; they weren’t familiar tales retold, or old classics that the storyteller knew by heart and was repeating. He or she had made them up himself/herself.