Why aren’t I more successful? What am I doing wrong? What am I not doing that I should be doing? I’m so tired of struggling and not getting any farther ahead. Maybe I should try that…or that…or maybe….Hell. I don’t know what to do.

Does this inner dialogue sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone. When we are stuck or feel like the dip is neverending, we often look outside ourselves for solutions. What if the solutions are inside, not outside? What if our own beliefs are limiting us? And if so, how do we uncover and change them?

We…

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a career professional, your ability to be productive, profitable, and successful depends on your health. If you’re like a lot of us, we work so hard on our business or career, we become so focused on business that we let our health and fitness slide.

Too many skipped lunches, too many late nights working, too many glasses of wine to wind down all take a toll on our health, and, in turn, negatively affect the amount of success and satisfaction we feel from all our hard work. …

The best writing is precise and concise.

How would you look if you lost 10% of your weight? Most of us would look better. It’s the same for our writing…

Pacing is often discussed as it relates to fiction writing. In a writing class that I took years ago from the University of Oklahoma, we were taught to use a scene/sequence structure. The scene moves the action forward and usually ramps up the pace to gain the reader's attention. The sequence follows and slows things down, giving the reader a breather as we transition to the next scene.

Scene, sequence, scene, sequence, repeat.

Let’s look at a scene/sequence example from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Warning: Spoilers ahead. Scene: Ringwraiths attack the hobbits and the…

The Purdue Online Writing Lab — The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University offers a wide variety of helpful information, including grammar, punctuation, composition, and more. No fees or enrollment is necessary.

Common Errors in English Usage — The website of Professor Paul Brians contains hundreds of words commonly misused, such as affect and effect, then and than, and more. It also is free to the general public.

Grammar Girl — The website and blog of Mignon Fogarty, founder of the Quick and Dirty Tips network and creator of Grammar Girl, one of Writer’s Digest’s 101 best websites for…

Early in my writing career, I worked in 4 niches, one of which was children’s writing. My first sale was to a Sunday school paper in the Midwest; it was an article on the desert at night. I earned a whopping $15. I went on to write several hundred more nonfiction articles for everything from small, school newspapers to major publications like Ranger Rick and Jack and Jill.

While I love writing for kids, unless you’re R.L. Stine or J.K. …

I have always had a hot temper, so I have spent most of my life working on how to control, or, at least, temper my temper. Have I succeeded? More often than not; however, I have discovered that sometimes I need a quick intervention that keeps me from going off the deep end to the detriment of all, especially relationships.

Anger triggers responses in our mind, body, and emotions, which go on high alert. Stress hormones flood our system as we prepare for an instantaneous decision: flight, fight, or freeze. An uncontrolled temper is dangerous and can damage us and…