VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

It’s 5 am, and my house is silent.   With coffee brewing, the fireplace warms the chilly room where I sit snuggled under a blanket getting my hands to work through their cold stiffness to begin typing.   A small loving dog joins me on either side as another story begins, an idea is polished, a word is changed, or a character comes to life.   Before anyone else is awake, before anyone calls “Mom”, before the world begins to glow with the first rays of morning light, this is my writing time.     Of course, then the usual get the kids going, pack lunches, feed the dogs, and make sure anything that needs to have my signature is signed and put in the correct backpack takes over, and the day begins.   Writing continues after the barrage of morning Mom/wife duties has been completed.   It is a definite change from when I actually started this journey. As I read to my kids during Christmas break seven years ago, the ideas of Smarty Pig began to simply flood my thought.   I went to the com

Tips from Writer’s Digest and a few Words from Me! Every writer who has ever submitted his work to an agent, editor or publisher in the hopes of getting it published has at one time or another received the dreaded “rejection letter.” But do you wonder how other writers are doing it…getting published? Some will tell you they self-published or started their own publishing house. Others may say they have a friend, who has a friend, who has a friend in publishing. You may wonder if they just happened to scratch the winning lottery ticket. In most cases, these are all true but the one thing they also have done is called the softer side of marketing…or as I like to call it…selling yourself! Writing is more than creating a great book, article, poem or short story. It is about sharing yourself with the world. A great way to do that is by building your author platform. If you are like most of us, you want to devote most of your time to writing. However, it is just as important to build your p

Writer, write with passion. The kind of writing you produce shall oftentimes reflect the current state of your emotions. Be indifferent and your writing will be indifferent. Be cheerful and watch the words dance across your page. Whenever you sit down to write, put your heart and soul in it. Write with passion. Write as if you won't live tomorrow. Writer, write with purpose. Be goal-oriented. Do you write everyday with the purpose of getting published tomorrow? Writer, write with awareness. Be alert. Be observant. Extraordinary things happen to ordinary people. Your job as a writer is to capture as many of these things and write them down, weave stories, and create characters that jump out of the pages of your notebook. Don't let anything escape your writer's eye, not even the way the old man tries to subtly pick his nose or the way an old lady fluffs her hair in a diner. What you can't use today, you can use tomorrow so it is good to store these in

Quote: “ There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes.” ~Wm. Makepeace Thackeray   I wanted to share some changes happening with me and SFC Publishing. Some of you may have already heard about some or all of these changes through my newsletter, blog talk radio shows or via email, but beginning January 2012, SFC Publishing and its many divisions will be moving to a new network server/host. This means our websites will be going through a change over so if you try logging on and get a message, know we are just in the middle of a website move. We are hoping everything will go smoothly and readers will not even notice the switch, but I just wanted to make you all aware of it. Also, SFC Newsletter for Writers and Stories for Children Magazine will be cutting back to 6 issues a year. A choice I, and the rest of the SFC Team, did not make lightly. We hope you can understand and support our changes here at SFC Publishing.

 Read everything! You're bound to get ideas from the most unlikely of areas/sources. Write about things that matter to you. If the passion is missing, the writing won't be any good, so make it count. Write whenever you get the chance. Got a spare minute? Write a poem or thought! It keeps you in practice and gets the creative juices flowing. Be clear in what you're trying to say. Floral language is more likely to put people off reading your work than clear, concise language. Put your idea on paper before you begin to write. A quick outline or a couple of bullet points are useful as they help to keep the piece on track. Don't edit as you write; do it after the piece you're writing is finished. Stopping to edit interrupts the flow of your thoughts. Become familiar with writing styles. For certain publications, editors may ask you for references in your work. A working knowledge of APA, MLA, AP and Chicago styles is always an advantage. R

Frank Scully was born and raised in a small town in North Dakota and received a Bachelor’s degree in History with Phi Beta Kappa Honors and a Juris Doctor degree in Law from the University of North Dakota.  He then served more than five years as a Judge Advocate General Corps Officer in the U.S. Army in the U.S., Vietnam, and Thailand. After that he attended the prestigious Thunderbird School and received a Masters in Business Administration with honors. In his professional career he has worked as an executive with large aerospace and defense manufacturers and also owned his own small business.  Depending on the vagaries of the universe he has been well off at times and broke, but never broken at other times. Blessed with an understanding wife who gave him twin sons, he has remained through it all a dreamer whose passion is writing stories that will entertain readers.  Empty Time   is his latest release. VS: I want to thank you, Frank for being my guest here on The Writing Mama tod