Writing

General posts about writing (sometimes my own, but not always)

Writing Has A Super Power: It Can Heal You

May 19, 2017 0 Comments

Image source Writing is a lot of things to a lot of people. It is an escape, it is a purpose, a hobby, a job and a passion, a way of life. It is the single greatest invention in the history of time because it changed the world; it took what people had been forced to remember and made it tangible. Agriculture, recordkeeping, recipes, ideas and inventions; all of these were made possible thanks to the written word. But above all of this, above all of these reasons to write, writing can heal. Stress, worry, anxiety, the black mist and a messy mind; these are all things that we all have to deal with, and writing can help that no end, which is why we…
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Contributed Posts, Writing

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How I first got published, part 6 – all that other stuff

March 11, 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! There is a lot of stuff they don’t tell you about getting a book published. You hear about the process of writing, and crafting cover letters, and how to approach agents and publishers, and on and on and on, but what about all the stuff the happens after you secure a deal? No one tells you about that. By this point I had done a pretty good job of educating myself on The Process. Thanks to loads of reading — books, articles, and blogs…
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Writing

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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….
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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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