Tag Archives: author

What Kind of Editor Are You?

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what kind of editor are you.jpg

Disclaimer: This is a longer post than I intended, but it’s funny. Read it through, I promise you won’t be bored. 😉

Yesterday I finished transcribing a short story I wrote in high school with a friend. I briefly wrote about it in a post last week. It was written in two parts, but part two was never finished. Sad face.

Turning it into an electronic version was hard though for two reasons:

  1. I left the journals in my trunk (for 6 years), and one ended up under a forgotten ice chest. Thus, the pages were wet previously, and now dry. I wish I’d taken a picture of the first few pages. They were JUST legible enough that I was able to transcribe. But not an easy task, for sure.
  2. I had to resist the urge to edit everything now. This story was horribly written and I just wanted to fix it. But I do my best editing on paper. So I needed to just get it typed up first.

On the outside, the plot summary sounds pretty good. If I had to write it now, it would go something like this: Continue reading →

Three Kinds of Writing Books Every Writer Should Read, Part 3 (Guest Post)

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Part 3: The Life of Writing

The life of writing isn’t like a job where you clock in and clock out. Sure, if you’re a journalist, but not if you’re writing fiction. If a day goes by and you don’t write a single word, there’s no one to dock your pay.

So now, the final book you need in your regular reading diet as a writer: something about actually living the writing life. Because, guess what? Just focusing on the writing itself isn’t enough. Unless your goal is to finish your novel and stick it in a drawer. Or if you don’t actually care about finishing. Or if you just want to dabble, if writing is just a hobby. But if you want to get your writing out into the world and reach readers, you’ll need to do more. And you’ll need a guide. In The Art of War for Writers, James Scott Bell serves up 77 bite-sized chapters on how to succeed in the life of writing, organized into three parts:

bookss.jpeg Continue reading →

Making it Big as an Author

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FROM TROY & LAURICE.jpg

At work today, my coworker made a jab about my lack of progress on any of my writing lately. Part of me needs to be jabbed on occasion.

Not with anything sharp or pointy though. Not the literal jabbing. Please.

We got to talking about how hard it was to really “make it big” as an author these days. The market is saturated with books, and unless you can land publication with a huge publishing house, the odds are definitely stacked against you.

(For the record, I am NOT bashing self-publishing by any means. So please don’t take it that way.) 

It is definitely possible to make it big in self-publishing. It’s just really, really hard. You have to do everything for yourself.

But for many, it’s our only option when it becomes obvious that the big publishing houses aren’t willing to take many chances on new authors.

The chances that your debut novel will make it big time are slim to none. Continue reading →