NAWW Member, Therèse Tappouni of Indian Shores, Florida, author of “The Promise—Revealing the Purpose of Your Soul”, has received the Women’s Issues Bronze Medal for 2009 from the Independent Book Publishers Association. Therèse is the author of four previous books, plus a CD and has been featured in many literary and main stream publications. She is a therapist and workshop director, and you can reach her at www.IsisInstitute.org.
Q: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
A: About ten years ago at age 42, I entered college for the first time. I had bought a business when I was 21, it was successful and kept me busy but I always wondered about college. Luckily because of scoring high on the assessments, I was able to bypass the basic writing classes and take the most advanced writing class at the university called: How to Write a Major Project. There I decided to write my first book, If the Battle is Over, Why am I Still in Uniform? It was a story I wanted to write for my two children who were 3 and 5 years old at the time when I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer at age 39. It tells about going through colon cancer in a funny and poignant way. One night as I was writing, I heard a weird sound, looked up from my writing and realized it was birds chirping. I had been writing nonstop all night long and was totally engaged. That is when I realized the writing bug bit.
Q: How and when did you make this dream a reality?
A: A few years later I published my first book, two years after that, the second book came out, I’d Like to Buy a Bowel Please! I also started writing a humor column in a medical newsletter regularly as well as a blog with a medical thread to it. You can read that at www.C3life.com.
Q: What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far in your writing career?
A: Show, Don’t Tell! and how powerful a sentence is without superfluous words.
Article Writing Mistakes – 7 To Avoid
Making your articles available for reprints by other ezine publishers and webmasters is the cornerstone strategy in building an avalanche of pre-qualified visitors to your website.
If you want your articles to be picked up and massively distributed by others, here are 7 common mistakes to avoid:
Article Mistake #1 Too many grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors.
In addition to having your article proofed by others, you may also want to be sure that you have clearly defined paragraphs. Nothing is worse than a big blob of text with 20 run-on sentences.
Readers no longer read articles in depth and often only ’scan’ your article. They want small bites of information that can be easily digested… also known as “info-snacking.”
Keep your “voice” in the same person throughout the entire article. If you are using the first person voice (I, me) or the second person (you, we, us) or the third person (they, them, he, she)…be consistent by staying in one voice for the entire article.
Julia McCutchen is running a FREE preview teleseminar on Tuesday 19 May called HOW TO WRITE THE ULTIMATE BOOK PROPOSAL.
This event is for both fiction and non-fiction writers who who would like a publisher’s perspective on what a book proposal should include (and what to leave out!); how publishers use the information you present to make their final decisions; and the best way to make sure your proposal stands out for all of the right reasons. For more information & to register your place, visit http://tinyurl.com/onj55k or email Julia@JuliaMcCutchen.com
Hi Women Writers,
Hope you are having a wonderful week so far. 
This week’s newsletter is now available at the link below, enjoy!
http://www.naww.org/ezine/may0709.html
Here are a few highlights:
To your success,
Sheri McConnell