The other night in my Writer's Group meeting, one writer asked about a particular publishing house. I told him that it's a vanity press and they are best avoided.  A vanity press is a press which will print whatever you like, as long as you pay for it.  A vanity press does not market, edit or see to your best interest as a writer. I know a good number of people who have used a vanity press and it's been an uphill battle for them to have any success as a result.. The reasons are numerous, but the bottom line is, in the publishing world, using a vanity press is akin to getting your degree from a for-profit university.  Once you do that, no one in the education world will take you seriously, your "credentials" will not be listed and you might find it hard to get, or keep, a viable position. Likewise, once you use a vanity press, you will find that viable publishers don't take you seriously. Curiously, neither print on demand nor e-publishing fall into this...

This is a guest post of sorts.  The author of this article , 20 Redundant Phrases to Eliminate from Your Writing , has no idea I'm posting their article, but I found it so relevant and helpful I thought it deserved a spot in my blog.  Thank you Mickie Kennedy for this timely and well-written piece. Read and learn, writers. Redundancy can end today! ~Tricia

How do you organize your writing projects? I like to think of myself as organized, but to someone looking in, I would not appear very organized  at all.  Life is busy. Organization takes work.  I get lazy.  Stuff piles up.  You get the picture.  But, right now, I have a big writing project in the works and I'm actively working to get this project organized to help it go more smoothly, and to help it be successful.  I'm in the process of creating different computer files, organized into one folder with the project title as the folder name. As I look to the future and writing full-time, I'm experimenting with different systems to find which works best for me.  For now, I'm excited about the new folder/file system and am determined to stay as organized as I start out being. I may combine several systems into one new system. This is not my normal method, so I'm really excited about the challenge this presents.  Normally, I think about a writi...