Tag Archive: Writing

How I first got published, part 5 – Revising and rewriting

March 10, 2017 1 Comment

The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I’ve authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! (If you’re joining me in progress, this is the 5th part in a series devoted to outlining how my co-author and I managed to get our book, A Year of Hitchcock, published.) So here’s the part where the joy of getting a contract is smothered in the giant pile of WORK no one tells you about when you first start writing. Because make no mistake, writing is not what you think it is when you daydream about a career as an author. It’s WORK….
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How I first got published, part 4 – The Waiting Game

March 9, 2017 1 Comment

The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I’ve authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! Welcome to part 4 of a series detailing from start to finish how A Year of Hitchcock went from a neat idea to a published book (Scarecrow Press, 2009). Every step of the way, from writing to pitching to all the work we had to do after it was sold. If you’re an aspiring writer, hopefully this will help give you some insight on the process as my co-author Jim and I experienced it. The query letter was the subject of my last blog…
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Writing

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How I first got published, part 3 – The Query

March 8, 2017 0 Comments

The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I’ve authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! Yesterday I talked about the process by which Jim and I began writing A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense. Week in and week out we were either in front of the TV watching Hitchcock’s work or, more often than not, in front of our keyboards writing, revising, and writing some more. It was midway through the year when we knew we had something publishable on our hands. By this time we has also developed an inertia that wasn’t going…
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Writing

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How I first got published, part 2 – Ideas and Execution

March 7, 2017 1 Comment

The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I’ve authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! So as I mentioned in the first part of this series, ideas are, in the grand scheme of things, relatively worthless. In some ways they are the least significant piece of the puzzle. After all, creative people – and I assume that if you’re reading this you’re probably a creative person – usually have far more ideas than they know what to do with. Had I 48 hours to each day and no need to sleep I still wouldn’t have time to do and…
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Writing

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How I first got published, part 1 – Introduction

March 6, 2017 2 Comments

The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I’ve authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! Chances are, if you like to write you’d also like to be read. While you can throw things onto the Internet and be read instantly, it’s not quite the same thing as a publisher saying, “I like your work. I’d like to invest our time and money into it. I’d like to publish your book.” Because let’s be honest with ourselves: Blogging is nice, self-publishing is interesting, but the majority of aspiring writers know being picked up by a legitimate publisher is key to…
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Writing

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