Tag: writer’s bane
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My First Ads: what worked & what didn’t.
Authors need readers. If I wanted to get philosophical I would say readership defines the difference between writing and authoring, but that’s another post. This one addresses a more practical issue: being seen. The publishing world is full of people crying their wares. Call it marketing, self-promotion, advertising, outreach, networking, or whatever; success is all…
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Chip off the Ol’ Writer’s Block
The information in this post comes from an SFWA panel on writer’s block I attended in June 2015. If you’re a speculative fiction writer and can afford to attend the SFWA weekend in June 2016, I highly recommend the experience. I learned a lot in this session and others, and I met a lot of…
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Gardners & Architects & Bugaboos, Oh, My
Are you an outliner or a plot-on-the-fly kinda person? Is one harder than the other? Here’s one take: GRRM makes pantsing (or gardening as he calls it) sound easy. Lazy, even. This irks me. (He considers himself a gardener by the way.) He is doing his own work a disservice by belittling the effort that…
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How to Know Someone Famous
Do you know J. K. Rowling? Neil Gaiman? No? Me neither. I know the settings they created as well as I know any place on the solid spinning world my body inhabits, but I’ve never met them. I know their characters with an intimacy I can’t claim of most living, breathing people, but I can’t claim…