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Oh, my…
All I Can Say… I was sent a couple days ago a court case about one author taking the work of another author. This has been a public case and I am going to make no comments on the case itself or let any comments through about the case. I do not know the facts beyond what I have read in the suit. Of course, there is an agent in the middle of the entire mess. And also named in the action. No comment there other than I stand by my solid belief that all agents are crooks and steal writer’s money. So why am I writing this… why am…
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Needing a Reader and Copyeditor…
Fighting Myths Again… Beginning and early professional writers always seem to focus on needing to have editors and copyeditors and beta readers and everything else. Always overkill and usually, almost without exception, it also kills their writing and stories. Some background. This obsessive desire for editing and copyediting on novels comes from three places. — First, it comes from 1970s-1990s traditional publishing habits that have stuck around and passed around as needed like myths of a big tall walking snowman with a chainsaw. In other words, too stupid for reality in 2020, but still believed by those coming into the publishing profession. — Second place all this editing stuff comes…
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Special Stories
This Came From A Question I Get A Great Deal… In fact, I think some form of this question is the most common question I get overall. The question basically boils down to this… A writer has learned something new. Should that writer go back and fix some old stories or novels to make them better? The last two times I got this question (just yesterday and today) caused me to flash back to a memory. (Might have been being so tired from CES, but either way, here came the memory.) I remembered clearly how when I finished a story back in my “rewriting” days it was something special. And…
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A Rewriting Metaphor
To Explain Yet Another Reason Why Rewriting Is Silly… Say your goal is to walk across the United States. About 2,800 miles. So say your writing career (in a modern world) lasts over forty years like mine and gets you 280 books written. Got to make the numbers round for this metaphor. (grin) So every 100 miles is a novel in your hike across the United States. So you set off walking on your novel career and get to the end of your first hundred miles of walking. Nifty. You have completed a novel. Along the way you have seen some beautiful country, met some people, had some adventures, got…
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A Question I Got
And My Answer… I deleted the question and my response and decided to answer it here so the author is not seemingly attacked by me. The author’s only fault is a massive belief in myths. So no point in me getting personal. So here is the author’s question in general. The author had a large (400 plus page book) that was in 4th draft. The author wanted to know if we had a workshop that would help him make the next rewrite/polish/edit draft better. Yes, someone actually asked me that question. Here is my response: I’m afraid not a one of our workshops will help you at that stage. You…
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Not Rewriting. A Great Image of Proof
O’Neil De Noux Gives You Pictures… I know it is impossible for some of you to get out of your own way, to understand that the stupidity of the saying “Writing is Rewriting” can kill your writing and your dream. Numbers of us over the years have tried to show by truth and example the silliness of rewriting. Heinlein gave his business rules, pulp writers showed by example, I do this blog, often detailing my writing, and Harlan Ellison also tried to show by example. In a wonderful blog, award-winning writer O’Neil de Noux shows you what it looked like for Harlan to write in a bookstore window. Check it…
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WRITING INTO THE DARK: A New Online Workshop
WRITING INTO THE DARK… Learn how to write clean, first-draft novels and stories without ever outlining or rewriting. Yes, it can be done and most long-time professional writers do just that. Learn how to bring the fun of storytelling back to your writing and become more prolific along the way. This class will be full of techniques, myth-busting, and exercises to help you learn to write clean, first-draft novels that never need to be rewritten. If you automatically thought that can’t be done, you really need this workshop. If you are trapped in the myth of rewriting things until they are mush, you really need this workshop. If writing is…