Tina Haapala, Excuse Editor

Filomena Scalise / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Fun Fact: The average person has over 1460 dreams a year, according to the backside of one of the pages in my page-a-day calendar. What does this mean for a writer? Morning Pages Many writers are familiar with Julia Cameron 's morning pages , usually a three page free-write to get the creative juices flowing before anything else in your day. When I am in the habit of morning pages, I have the notebook, a pen, and my glasses within stretching distance so I can start writing before I'm entirely awake. You can imagine, some interesting, albeit sloppy, writing finds its way to those college-ruled pages. More often than not, a shadow of a dream is still clouding my mind's eye, so I start to write about the dream. I may go into detail about the dream, telling it like a story. I may only remember fragments of the dream--who was in it, how I felt--so the writing may turn to wondering why that particular scene visited my early morning...

The popularity of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books is beyond extraordinary. What started out as a multi- rejected book idea has turned into a multi-million dollar book empire. More than 110 million Chicken Soup for the Soul books have been sold. Many of the books have been translated to 40 different languages. I'm proud that my personal essays have been included in some of these books, and I hope to continue being a Chicken Soup contributor. My Story I thought I would share a bit about being published in these collections. I'm very happy with my Chicken Soup experiences, and part of that may be that I went into it with little expectations at first. I started with them because I had a few stories that seemed to fit what they were looking for, and I thought I had nothing to lose. Unlike some of the other markets and contests I was looking at, submitting to Chicken Soup could be done at no cost to me, and I didn't even need to worry about a postage stamp, because they ha...

Karl Binder / FreeDigitalPhotos.net While watching an episode of CSI one night, I realized that this kind of storytelling entails using many more elements than you would think. After all, watching TV is a place where you just kind of zone out and have the story thrust upon you, right? All of the hard work needs to be done prior to hitting your cable box, so you don't have to work at all. For example, in this particular scene, the investigators were preparing to 'do their thing' with a car--the plan was to take it apart in order to find evidence. If I would have hit 'mute' right at that time, I would not have felt the gravity of the situation. Without the music, the dialogue, the familiar characters, and the sound effects (you know, as the camera zoomed in at the crucial piece of fuzz stuck on the steering wheel), this scene would have been nothing more than some dude walking around a car with a flashlight. Even if you are not writing a screenplay, you st...

Prospering in the Gig Economy:  Simple Habits for Writers That Pay Off Quickly Guest Post by Christina Katz Money is what writers earn for their time and energy. Furthermore, writing careers are built over time not overnight. So don't put your career in jeopardy by paying attention to everything else at the expense of your bottom line. Here are nine prosperity-increasing tips that can quickly become habit and put more money in the bank for the same number of hours you already work or maybe even less: Make a list of paid work vs. unpaid work, if you don't have one already and update it monthly. Add to-dos like upcoming deadlines and prep for future efforts, to make sure you don't have to scramble later. Prioritize the work you do that is paid over the work you do that is unpaid. This doesn't mean the unpaid work is not important or doesn't need to get done. It simply means that you will get the paid work done first and then tackle the unpaid work. Spend time...