Stop worrying about getting published and concentrate on getting better. That was some of the sage advice the celebrated novelist offered writers at a literary seminar last week in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. “Focus on the work itself and not on what may or may not eventually happen to it,” Robbins said. “If the [...]

The most productive writers I’ve known develop skills and techniques that carry them through episodes of writer’s block, procrastination, and loss of focus. Writing is an art, a craft and a discipline. It takes a lot of energy and creativity to work all alone for the most part, to overcome bumps in the road and [...]

What’s it like for a writer to work at the elbow of legendary filmmaker George Lucas? For the answer, I turned to my son Jonathan, an executive editor and writer at LucasBooks. He’s worked closely with the boss and other staff for the past seven years to write and produce dozens of titles related to [...]

Business is booming at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. Eleven new major book deals nailed down and that was while Sandy was vacationing in Europe. So look out, now that she’s back! Widely considered the most powerful agent on the West Coast, Dijkstra has been called “tough” and “abrasive” with a keen nose for new [...]

Many successful books are written by ghost writers, co-authors, and other, often uncredited, collaborators. If I sign up an author who’s a highly regarded expert in the field but not a professional writer, I bring in a ghost who’s a pro at getting under someone else’s skin and producing a seamless work in the author’s [...]

Taos, NM ~ This special place in the high desert has for generations drawn writers and artists, who come for the spiritual power of the endless skies, blazing sunlight, and thundering cloudscapes over the vast open plains and dark jagged mountains. D.H. Lawrence and Willa Cather, playwright Thornton Wilder, poet Robinson Jeffers, painter Georgia O’Keefe, [...]