I think there are several things that I do well (although I usually don’t dwell on what they are). On the writing front, I am able to knock off words that make sense relatively quickly. I’m a good line editor and a passing developmental editor on other people’s work. I’m even pretty good at talking to people about writing and pitching my work. What I am VERY bad at (and hence the title of this post) is promoting my work once it is out there. I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m worried that I will talk TOO much about my writing and drive people away. I’ve seen many other people do exactly that. All I get from them […]
Read moreCategory: Irreverent Muse
Converted to the Rewrite
When I first became serious about writing I heard stories of people who spent huge amounts of time and effort to rewrite books from scratch. That never made sense to me. After all, you have already written something. Why would you want to write it again? The stories usually had some commentary about how the writing went faster and was much better. I still couldn’t wrap my head around the whole thing. Then, I went through the editorial process for Mik Murdoch, Boy Superhero. The whole back and forth of revision-comment-edit-comment-revise more was a real learning experience for me. There were cases in the process where I wrote brand new chapters and threw away the parts of the book they […]
Read moreWorld Fantasy Convention 2012
Last week I attended the 2012 edition of the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto (well, actually Richmond Hill), Ontario. I have been to WFC in the past, most recently in San Diego last year. The difference this time was, I was attending the convention as a professional writer with a book and several published short stories under my belt. I must confess, I was a little put off by the $81 cab ride; the hotel was, as mentioned above, not actually in Toronto and there were no cheaper alternatives that didn’t involve excessive travel time (or at least, so I thought). However, once I was settled in the hotel, the excitement of being there started to grow. I could continue […]
Read moreGet Published Episode 96 – Marc Johnson & Remembrance
If you are listening to this on November 11th, chances are good that you have had some sort of a ceremony commemorating the end of World War 1. Here in Canada that takes the form of Remembrance Day. During the Tips and Typos section of the show, I spend a few moments commenting on what that means to me. I also have Marc Johnson on the show again. You may remember Marc from episode 64 when we talked about writing, podcasting, eBooks and self-publishing. On today’s show we talk about series writing. It was a fun conversation and we talked about tying books together and some of the challenges of writing a series. That’s today’s episode. I hope you enjoy […]
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