• Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing,  On Writing,  publishing

    Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing: #3…Rewriting

    This series of posts will turn into a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing later this fall with an introduction. And then it will be followed by a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. But first I wanted to put each myth or “Sacred Cow” up here again as I promised. This third Sacred Cow article was published here in 2010 and I redid it once in 2011, but now it is slightly redone for the world of 2013/2014. However, this third incarnation hasn’t changed that much. On many of these posts it is amazing to me as I redo them…

  • Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing,  On Writing,  publishing

    Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing: #1

    This series of posts will turn into a book later this fall with an introduction. And then it will be followed by a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. But first I wanted to put each myth or “Sacred Cow” up here again as I promised. This first Sacred Cow article was published here in 2010 and I redid it once since, but now it is completely redone for the world of 2013/2014. On many of these posts it is amazing to me as I redo them how far my beliefs have changed in a few short years. And how far publishing has changed as…

  • Challenge,  publishing

    The Wet Blanket Reality… Introduction

    INTRODUCTION…The Myths The Wet Blanket Reality will be a writing book about the reality of trying to sell novels to traditional publishers. I suppose the title of the book could be TRADITIONAL NOVEL PUBLISHING: The Wet Blanket Reality. But as I write this here on my blog, chapter-by-chapter, I’m just going to call it by the subtitle. Fits better. And sadly gives away the book. That’s right. I am going to be a wet blanket, smother a little of your writing dreams to help you gain a more sustainable and fun dream of being a long-term professional writer. Think of it this way. Part of you is on fire so…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    The Rewriting Myth

    Got a Letter Today… A very real private letter from a very, very frustrated person who had just seen the Sacred Cow posts I did all those years ago.  (Some are dated but they are all still here.) The writer was thanking me for talking sanity. The letter was heartbreaking, described how it had taken a year-and-a-half to write the novel and two-and-a-half more years rewriting and the writer still wasn’t happy with it, but wanted to move on. The writer was clearly having a long-held dream crushed by the myths that range from writing slow and sloppy to rewriting and needing editors and agents and so on. Once again,…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    Logic: The Lost Art in Being a Fiction Writer

    Don’t Try Logic… Dangerous to Your Myths I have been going on now in numbers of posts about how we fiction writers sabotage ourselves. Fear without real cause is the normal reason. But I have another deeper reason tonight. Lack of logic. In a few posts I used math to try to make sense of the silliness of a few myths. Math tends to be very logical. Simply put, fiction writers, when it comes to the very basis of being a fiction writer, toss all logic out the window and listen to people who have never written or published a book. This goes on from the very beginning of every writer’s career.…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  Topic of the Night,  Writing in Public

    Some Great Posts

    Some Great Posts On the site Women in Science Fiction, Kris is hosting and doing some great stuff, as well as having guest blogs there. Vonda N. McIntyre has the most recent guest blog there. The one before that was Judith Tarr. Worth reading and following that site, folks. And, of course, before it is gone, get the story bundle pictured above. Stunning amount of great reading for $15.00. http://storybundle.com/scifi The web site with the blogs and Kris’s writing on the topic is at: http://www.womeninsciencefiction.com/ THE DAY IN GENERAL Mostly all day I worked on workshop stuff. Then home for a short nap, dinner and news. I got in here…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    The Top Five Dumbest Business Practices in Publishing

    The Top Five Dumbest Business Practices in Publishing From the real world perspective, publishing is really, really, really known for its head-shakingly stupid business practices. But inside of publishing, these practices have become so common and set in “the way things are done” as to be defended by otherwise sane business people. So I figured I would honor Dave Letterman’s departure with a quick top five list. I’ll give the real world equivalent of the publishing practice, then the actual publishing practice, working down to the most stupid publishing practice of them all. There are many others. I try to deal with a lot of them in the Killing the…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    The New World of Publishing: Spreading Out

    SPREADING OUT: The 2014 Story of One Business and Two Writers I figure it would be time to clear the air here at the beginning of the year on a few things about our business. Now understand, WMG Publishing Inc. is a corporation that is privately held and I can’t and won’t spread financial information as many indie writers do without a thought to the consequences. But I can talk in general about things for teaching purposes. The point of this is to help writers understand how we do it and also illustrate the idea that it is a bad idea to look to only one source for sales or…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    New World of Publishing: Failure Must Be An Option

    FAILURE MUST BE AN OPTION Part one of the annual setting goals posts. I’ll bet a few of you got very uneasy by me starting off a New World blog post with: “Failure Must Be Option.” This post is a much changed post from 2012 about setting goals. And how to move forward with your writing. And to do that, you must fail, over and over to become an artist in this business and to just survive. And that’s normal and perfectly fine. Let me say this clearly. The reason I am starting right here, talking about failure, is that until you understand failure in publishing, you don’t have a lot of…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    The New World of Publishing: A Return to the Past

    A Look Back at January 11, 2011 That’s right, I wrote the following post on January 11, 2011, talking some about the coming war between writers and the problems with the future of agents. I was looking back at some old posts to clean them out and stumbled on this and was stunned. I remember warning people of the coming war between writers and getting laughed at. Not sure anyone is laughing anymore, sadly. Take a look back at 2011.  Anything I put in (Bold Italics is a comment I have added tonight.) ———— Okay, time to talk about agents and their future in this changing world. Mary Kole, who…