Insider Secrets For Selling
Every Word You Write!

GET PUBLISHED

It's not a pipe dream.

Seeing your byline and a check in your mailbox doesn't have to be a fantasy.

After 15 years of teaching college writing and 9 years of working as an executive editor at Rodale Press, I am convinced of one thing:

If you have average intelligence, an average facility with words and enough desire, I can teach you how to make a living writing for publication.

Want proof? You're talking to him. I taught myself to earn paychecks in all of those forms and a few more that aren't listed above, including screenplays and TV scripts.

I firmly believe that if you are shown the innards of a genre--its formats and formulas--you can produce publishable prose using the tools of this trade called writing.

Notice that I didn't mention literary awards, visions of greatness or even that thing sometimes loosely referred to as "art," whatever that is. As one of my mentors, J.N. Williamson, told me, "Do your work long enough, hard enough and with enough care, and then maybe, someday, art will happen. But chances are, you won't know it. You'll be too busy writing."

How does your dream become a reality?

Three simple steps:

Step 1: Find a Master.
You need to be taken backstage at the magic show by a working professional who does that kind of writing everyday for a living. Not talking about it. Not lecturing to students. But doing it. Paying the mortgage and grocery bills by doing it. You become that master's apprentice.

Step 2: Do it.
You don't sit at a desk and take notes. You do it. And the master helps you do it, one-on-one, just as if you were an apprentice blacksmith or wine maker. It's hard at first and not very good, but that's okay because you're an apprentice and your master understands that. Textbooks are helpful as reference tools, but mainly you just have to do it--a lot.

Step 3: Enjoy it.
The "it" in this case is the writing act itself, the moments of creation strung together like Christmas lights that adorn the finished thing. If you're writing only for the ego gratification of seeing your stuff in print, you're probably in the wrong field. It's okay to get your ego stroked. I recommend that you do so at least three times a day. But ultimately what will give you "legs" in this profession is the simple fact that you enjoy doing it--for the most part. Writing is like any other job in that regard.

I really like the way William Faulkner explained this to his students at the University of Virginia: "There are those who want to write, and those who want only to have written."

If you fit in that first category, I want you as my student/apprentice.

Apprenticeships/Courses Offered:

Magazine Writing

Short Story Writing

Novel Writing

Screenplays & Teleplays

Writing for Children and Teens

How It Works

Very simply: Our goal is to get you published/sold in the genre you choose. Will you fall short the first few times? Probably. And that's the difference between our apprenticeship program and academic courses, with their artificial ending dates and the reward of a "credit."

Again, our goal is to get you published. We will work with you as long as necessary to achieve that. That's a serious commitment on your part and ours. It may take a month, it may take a year. So let me share this with you:

How Much Does It Cost?

Again, these aren't once-and-done courses that you pay a fixed fee for. I'm not into that because they usually don't work and have a very soft focus.

Usually it's between $99 to $500, depending on the project. But that fee is for a "course" that lasts until you say it's over, whether that's weeks or months. Our focus is on results--publication--not the artificial time limits of a course.

Our current online courses are:

Write Your Novel in Sixty Days or Less

Get a Byline or Get a Refund