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Killing Even More Sacred Cows of Publishing: #2… Getting a Critique is a Good Way to Learn
Book three in this series. Book one was KILLING THE TOP TEN SACRED COWS OF PUBLISHING. Book two was KILLING THE TOP TEN SACRED COWS OF INDIE PUBLISHING. Both books are available everywhere in electronic, paper, and audio. What I call a “Sacred Cow” is basically a myth spread around publishing like the truth. Myths such as “rewriting must be done for every story.” Myths such as “you need an agent to sell a book,” or “sell a book to a different country.” And so on. You can either buy the first two books to get all twenty of the Sacred Cows, or just click on the tab above and read them…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Seven
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER SEVEN On to the fourth rule. Rule #4: You Must Put It On the Market. “It” in the rule refers to your finished and not rewritten story or novel. On the surface, this rule is very, very basic. And yet it was this rule that I had the most problem with over the years. This and Rule #5. Old Traditional Publishing World What Heinlein meant when he wrote this business rule in 1947 was that you had to send your story to some market that would buy it, publish it, and pay you money. When I started with these rules…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Four
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER FOUR Moving now to the second rule. Rule #2: You Must Finish What You Write. Say 9 out of 10 people who claim they want to write are wiped out by Rule #1 because they “just can’t find the time.” If that is the case, then my guess is that another half of the remaining writers are stopped cold by Rule #2. Now, I have to be honest, I never had an issue with this rule, so I mostly just ignored it. I always finished what I wrote. Part of that was the early challenge to mail a story per week,…
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Heinlein’s Rules: Chapter Three
HEINLEIN’S RULES Five Simple Business Rules for Writing CHAPTER THREE Still working on rule number one. Rule #1: You Must Write. Back in 1982, when I climbed onto my challenge to use Heinlein’s Rules and write a story per week and mail each story every week, I had one major issue that I fought. Fear. No idea what I was afraid of, but the fear was real. On December 31st, 1981, my thinking was that every story had to be perfect, had to be worked over and over and before I dared send it out. And it had to be written slowly and carefully to be good. I believed…
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Learning is Attitude
Learning is Attitude Tonight, for the third night in a row, the storm hit again. Flooding all over the entire Pacific Northwest, and power was out here for three hours tonight. But now that the power is back on, I’ve decided to just go on as normal until it flickers and goes out again. After 20 years living here on the Oregon Coast, you get used to this, sadly. At least the power came back on after three hours. —– THE DAY Made it through the monsoon rains to the snail mail, the grocery store, and then to WMG Publishing around 2 p.m. for work on continuing to set…
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Sales Numbers
Sales Numbers Kris is doing much better. Learning how to get around the house in her knee brace and crutches. So great there. She thanks everyone for the well-wishes. And her attitude about this is great. — It is now last call for October Online Workshops. Still room and time to sign up. Remember, the workshop only take about 3-4 hours of your time each week at your own pace. And even if the workshop started on Monday, you can still sign up. Not behind at all. Class #31… Oct 5th … Advanced Depth Class #32… Oct 5th … Character Voice/Setting Class #33… Oct 5th … Pacing Your Novel Class #34… Oct 5th ……
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How to Write Fiction Sales Copy: Chapter Nine (Last)
HOW TO WRITE FICTION SALES COPY CHAPTER NINE (Summary. This book is coming about because I need to write 32 story blurbs for the 32 short stories I wrote in July for a book titled Stories from July.) In the first chapter of this book, I touched on what I call “The Author Problem” and gave a basic formula that I sometimes use to give blurbs a structure. And in chapter two I laid out another formula for writing blurbs. In the third chapter I talked about a method Lee Allred uses. In the fourth chapter I talked about the idea that sometimes using first lines can help. In the fifth chapter, I…
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The Stages of a Fiction Writer: Introduction
(Every day I will put another chapter here of this book. Patreon supporters, you will get the full book sent to you when it is all done.) STAGES OF A FICTION WRITER Introduction About twenty-five years ago, I was struggling to figure out where I was on the path to becoming a fiction writer. I had sold novels, lots of short stories, been an editor, owned a publishing company, and had readers buying my books. But honestly, none of that mattered to me. I liked it, sure, but my goal was to be a better writer, a better storyteller, actually. And I had no idea at all where I was at…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing: #10…There is Only One Way to Publish a Book
Myths ignore facts. Myths are often beliefs built from fear or past actions. In this series, and in the previous series of Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing, I call the myths that control writers “Sacred Cows.” Writers hold onto myths like lifelines that are keeping them from drowning in a raging river of information. Sometimes sane people in the normal world will follow a publishing myth that makes no sense at all because it has something to do with the publishing business. And they follow the myth without thought. So this new series is an attempt to help the new world of indie publishing with the growing…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing: #8… I’ve Missed the Boat
Myths ignore facts. Myths are often beliefs built from fear or past actions. In this series, and in the previous series of Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing, I call the myths that control writers “Sacred Cows.” Writers hold onto myths like lifelines that are keeping them from drowning in a raging river of information. Sometimes sane people in the normal world will follow a publishing myth that makes no sense at all because it has something to do with the publishing business. And they follow the myth without thought. So this new series is an attempt to help the new world of indie publishing with the growing…