by Bev Bachel

If you’re like me, you typically think about networking as a way to get more of what you want. In my case, writing-related work. Since I have to earn enough each month to make my house payment, pay my bills, and fund my retirement account—no small feat in these challenging economic times—finding work is a constant. Thank goodness for my network.

But it dawned on me this morning that the power of my network is actually twofold: not only does it help me find work, it saves me from doing work.

by Wendy Brown-Báez

June Jordan, born in Harlem in 1936, poet, activist, and teacher, was a prolific, passionate, and influential voice for liberation. She said that poetry “produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders.”

Recently I was astonished by this e-mail from a friend and woman poet: “I had sent a distressed female friend in Afghanistan one of the early poems of William Butler Yeats, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree.’ Even when I was young, that poem gave me solace. I was quite shocked when the poem was cut from her e-mail and sent back to me with the message: “Unfit material for military personnel.” . . . My friend was dying of curiosity to know what had been censored, and, she, too, was amazed. I decided that the poem was perhaps cut—though I don’t know for certain—because it speaks of peace, or makes one long for peace.”

Such is the power of poetry.

What Every Self-Published Author Should Know

by Rachel M. Anderson

How does one become a New York Times bestselling author? That question has been posed to many famous writers over the years, and in interviews they all offer similar answers: it takes drive, perseverance, and a little luck.

Rejection letter after rejection letter didn’t stop romance writer Nora Roberts from pursuing her dream of getting published. She finally got her big break in 1981 when Silhouette Books published Irish Thoroughbred. She now has had 171 titles on the New York Times bestseller list.

John Grisham’s second novel, The Firm, made him a household name after Paramount Pictures bought the rights to turn the plot into a movie. The book went on to become the bestselling novel of 1991.

A book Stephen King had thrown away ended up catapulting him to stardom. He has his wife to thank for rescuing Carrie from the garbage can.

Once Nora Roberts, John Grisham, and Stephen King made it big, they had the luxury of publisher-provided resources to help sell their books—book tours and blogs set up for them, media appearances arranged, distribution agreements and marketing taken care of, and so on. As a self-published author, you’ll need to take care of these tasks on your own; and if you want your book to do well, you can’t ignore them.

by Pat Dennis

The ability to make someone laugh, whether on stage or in print, is not only a gift but quite possibly a genetic defect. I believe a person’s funny bone is inherited, right along with eye color and feet the size of Toronto.

In other words, you’re born funny. From day one, the humorists amongst us have had no choice but to look at, see, and experience life differently from the norm. It’s as if we were shot into this world, straight from our mommas’ wombs, wearing 3-D glasses perched atop rubber noses.