Start Small by Andy Scheer

Unless you live near his hometown of Quincy, Illinois, you likely missed the death notice this past week for Ernest Hemmings.

But if you're among the half-million people who each month receive Hemmings Motor News and its three companion magazines, you probably saw the news – and expressed gratitude for what he began in 1954. An auto parts dealer who sold items for Model T and Model A Fords, Ernest Hemmings started with a four-page mimeographed newsletter. By the end of the year, he had 500 subscribers.

The monthly publication grew too big for one man to handle, and he sold the operation in 1969.

Today Hemmings Motor News serves as an indispensable resource for people interested in antique autos, with each 500-page issue offering nearly 400 pages of classified ads for cars, parts, and services. Besides the four magazines' half-million print readers, an equal number each month visit the daily blog.

All from a four-page mimeographed newsletter.

If you're starting as a writer today, you'll likely begin with a blog or a website. Or contributing to someone else's.

If you offer the right content for the right people, your influence may grow.

But only if you start. And usually that means starting small.

Endings Hopefully Mean New Beginnings by Diana Flegal

In an effort to be a better person and honor God with what he has given me, I read a lot of self-help titles. If you look at my book shelves you will find twice the nonfiction as fiction titles. But then I own a lot of books.

At a friends recommendation I am reading, Necessary Endings, by Henry Cloud. Fortunately at the Beach at this time. :-)

In it, Henry mentions the economic turndown of 2008 when the auto industry got hit hard and made drastic cuts to their work force and quit producing cars that were not paying for their production. That same year  hit many businesses hard, and publishing was no exception.  One Christian publisher that once published 500 titles a year cut back to 250. Further still, publishers were hesitant to take on new authors because they represented a higher financial risk. Less slots and less opportunity. As a new agent with new clients, this was not good news.

Dr. Cloud also mentioned that many of these cuts had been long overdue. The economy provided the looksee the corporations needed to take.

In writing, sometimes there has to be necessary endings as well.

Authors I've read, kill off a favorite character in a series to their readers chargin because it was 'time'. Whole paragraphs and ancillary plot lines need to go. They take away from the main story and do nothing to 'move the story forward'.

Or a client decides they have to move on - their direction has changed, or the agent decides they have done everything they can for an author and would be holding them back if they kept them on their client list.

Necessary endings are hard for most, but hopefully lead to a company's better success or a better story.

What necessary endings have you faced lately in your writing journey?