John Scalzi made a post lately where he talked about the speed of publishing. Or, to be more accurate, the lack thereof. Someone asked him why new novelists always seem to be in their thirties, instead of twenties like musicians and actors, and he decided to give a nice long answer which is very illumating [...]
There was a voice mail waiting for me when I got home tonight to inform me that I am a finalist in the Pacific Northwest Writers Association 2009 Literary Contest. I am amazed, honored, and ecstatic. The PNWA contest has twelve categories, with eight finalists in each category. The list of all the 2009 finalists [...]
Sarah Weinman posted a link to an interesting article by an agent who discusses a publishing reporting tool called Bookscan. Publishers use Bookscan to tell them approximately how many copies of a book were sold. The problem is that it’s numbers aren’t accurate. According to the article publishers figure in a margin of error, that [...]
I read an article not long ago (I can’t remember where) that talked about what a recent change it was for people to believe that their job needed to have some sort of meaning and satisfaction. It used to be that what you did for work was just what you did for work. What is [...]
Argh. Not a good day so far. I got in 1188 words yesterday, though, which is great. But this morning I woke up so tired that I hit the snooze button longer than usual, got up late, then couldn’t face stringing words into sentences and caught up on Iran instead. I left my little USB [...]
1007 words on Monday, 1092 yesterday. So far the fifteen minute sprints are doing the trick! It’s been easier to get myself to sit down and write in the evening when I can say “Just fifteen minutes, it’s only fifteen minutes, you can do that much…” There have been a few posts on various blogs [...]
I hit my goal for over 3000 words over the weekend. I’m getting back into the rhythm. I finished a major section toward the end, and decided that was as far as I could go without re-writing the beginning. I can’t tie the threads together at the end if I don’t know what they are. [...]
Well, after my big 962-word day, Thursday was a total flop. I didn’t get anything else written after I had to re-type those 264 words in the morning. Yesterday wasn’t much better, 397 words, but I do have a little bit of an excuse. Devon Monk decided to host a writer/beta reader matchup on her [...]
Wrote 960 words yesterday! Yay me! I then wrote 230 words first thing this morning, and due to a software glitch, lost them. Grr. Thank goodness for automatic backups so I didn’t lose the whole chapter. I only had to remember and re-type the morning’s work. Which of course lost me the time to write [...]
I’ve never been able to keep up a journal. Ever. Not to save my life. So you can imagine my horror as I slowly realized that published authors really do need a blog. And how much I appreciate authors’ blogs. Okay, I told myself, when you become a published author you’re going to have to [...]