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Music was in the air when I was growing up. My siblings Katy, Dave and Phil were musical; my dad worked in inner-city New York where a musical revolution was taking place - folk music, rock n' roll, gospel music. My sister taught me to sing. My brothers taught me to play.
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I picked up a harmonica and taught myself.
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I was a Presbyterian minister at a small church in Omaha, Nebraska.
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If your goal is to write a book for publication, rule number one is that no one ever finished a book without sitting down and getting started. Few authors get published without engaging in the daily discipline of writing, even if some days that means staring down a blank notebook or computer screen and drooling into your bag of pork rinds.
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Words are so important to us, so vital to our beings, that we sometimes take this gift of ours for granted. We shouldn’t—words are too powerful to take for granted.
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Writing is a discipline, and you have to stay at it. Inspiration will come.
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Okay, so maybe you are the world’s authority on the art of making butter sculptures of dead presidents’ heads, but if you want to sell a book on the subject you’ll have to do more than know your stuff. You’ll need to make the idea sound sexy, or cool, or hot, or timely, or cute, or something that instantly makes it clear to people why the world needs your book.
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Start writing, and the muse will come. Not every time, but keep at it, and the muse will come enough for you to get the initial writing done.