Tag Archive: Writing

How I got published, part 4 – The Waiting Game

February 19, 2009 3 Comments

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 post. If you’re not familiar with what a query letter is, go read that post. I’ve even included the text of the letter that helped us grab the eye of a few publishers. So in our first batch of six queries…
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Works by Eric, Writing

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How I got published, part 3 – The Query

February 18, 2009 9 Comments

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 to break down, so we pulled the series offline and continued working on the same schedule we had set for ourselves at the start of the year. Now here’s where we broke ranks with how many nonfiction books are traditionally pitched…
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Writing

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How I got published, part 2 – Ideas and Execution

February 17, 2009 5 Comments

A Year of Hitchcock

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 create all I’d like to do and create. No doubt that applies to many of you. Ideas are just the start. But every story has to start somewhere, and this one started with an idea. I had been itching for a…
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Writing

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How I got published, part 1 – Introduction

February 16, 2009 5 Comments

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 making a career of it. I was fortunate enough to get exactly that response to A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense (Scarecrow Press 2009), a book I co-authored with my friend, Jim McDevitt. How did the…
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Alfred Hitchcock, Works by Eric, Writing

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The craziest DVD reviews I ever wrote pt. 2

February 9, 2009 1 Comment

As I mentioned in another post, I’ve sometimes taken a turn away from efforts at serious film criticism and instead veered into the rambling, incoherent, and bizarre. The site for which I used to be Editor-in-chief, DVD in my Pants, or DIMP, was (and is) known for off the wall, utterly crazy and very irreverent DVD reviews. So with that in mind, here are a few more selections from my more, errr, unprofessional reviews (adult language ahead!). Among the most incoherent, rambling, unfocused and bizarre reviews I ever wrote is my review of Baseball’s Most Unbreakable Feats, which does not even deserve to be called a review. It is … well, read on: “When you’re talking about unbreakable records, yeah, sure, talking about Ripken’s 37,819.34…
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