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The Fear of a Real Paycheck
Economic Basis for Fear… Last week I asked some basic questions, the premise being that I am questioning why I made simply writing for five days on that last novel something special. And on Thursday I asked a number of questions that got some fantastic responses. It is pretty clear that it is fear in one form or another stopping or slowing down or influencing most fiction writers these days. In all sorts of areas. Lots to talk about this week. And I believe some of the fears are just bogus and some have some pretty solid basis in reality. So I want to address a fear I have fought…
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More Questions
A Bunch More Discussion Questions For Writers I have been mostly talking to myself over the last four days, trying to make sense of some questions I have that don’t flat seem to have answers. Or at least not easy answers. So on the idea I might keep this up, I thought for a short post tonight I would just toss out a few more questions that would be fun to talk about in coming posts. Again, just sort of talking with myself, but feel free to chime in with other ideas. —Why is every writer I know in a hurry? —Why are most writers totally incapable of planning longer…
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Failure Must Be An Option
FAILURE MUST BE AN OPTION (I first did a version of this post in 2012, then brought it forward and updated it for 2014, and now updated again, here it is as part of this year-end flurry of posts to help get ready for 2017.) I’ll bet a few of you got very uneasy by me starting off a blog post with: “Failure Must Be An Option.” This post is about 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. (I really should repeat that last sentence.)…
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The New World of Publishing: Having Fun… Again
(Note: I wrote this in July 2013 and am posting it here again up front (without a word changed) because, to be honest, I’m getting a lot of certain types of questions from writers. This works as an answer to those questions. So here it is again. You might want to read it again, even if you remember it from July.) Having Fun Yeah, I know. A weird topic for a blog: Having Fun. Over the last week or so I had the fantastic pleasure of being in a large room for a week with thirty-five very-well-published professional writers, all excited about writing and publishing and having fun. That’s right. In…
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The New World of Publishing: Fear
For some time I have been considering going after the topic of fear in publishing. I know I talk about it all the time at workshops and in comments. And I have touched on the topic in a few blog posts some time in the past. But now, it seems the time is right to jump on this topic again. Why now? Because this last week Scott William Carter and I worked with almost twenty professional writers during a four day workshop called “Think Like a Publisher.” During the four days I watched writer after writer sort of look up and say at one point or another, “This is easy.”…