Hi, and welcome to the Five Word Prayers Daily, a five day a week daily devotional where we share the word, prayers, in our heart.

I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me, which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent.

Well, it's Friday, and you know what we're doing, that's right, the Friday five, five random things to switch it up a bit from our week of inspiration. Today, it's all about the writers.

Yeah, I've been wanting to do this one for a while, and today's the day, and full disclosure,

we're probably going to go over the five-minute mark.

But listen, it's hard to pack it all into five minutes.

I mean, this is important.

Writing, one of my favorite things.

If you're not a writer type, stick around because it still

might have some nuggets for you, but you writers, get your pins out. This will be fast. I'm going to go

quick and give you my five best writing tips in hopefully close to five minutes. Can I even do

it? We'll see. We better get started. I know that much. Let's go.

Thank you. I even do it? We'll see. We better get started. I know that much. Let's go. All right. This is a crazy short time, so no time for lead-in. But here we go. The five best

writing tips collected over, my goodness, now 12 years of writing experience, maybe a bit more.

Number one, very very important master the

art of the self-edit master the art of the self-edit listen editing is your friend so many writers

I think go in with our work stapled to our heart and we dare anyone to take anything out or

alter it in any way we don don't say that, of course,

but that's how we feel because we are convinced that our writing is just the way it needs to be

as it is, and we've said it the way we want it, and we're just simply too close to it so many

times to see it. Editors are a gift to us to help see what we cannot. But listen, even before we start writing a book

or having any kind of professional help from an outside editor, we ourselves need to learn how to

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