A couple years ago, JR Murdock and I wrote a book together. The suggestion to do so came, as I’m finding many of my projects do, via Twitter. A mutual friend, DanDanTheArtMan said we should write together. I thought about the idea, liked it and approached JR about it. In short order we had a working plot hammered out and an idea of how to do it. We started the actual writing during NaNoWriMo of that year. The resulting draft needed a lot of work but we both knew we had something fun. Even better, we had both enjoyed the experience of writing together so we starting plotting a second book for the day when we sold the first one. […]
Read moreTag: business
Writing Shouldn’t Be a Solitary Activity
In my early writing days I believed that it was just me and the words. No one else would ever be involved. I was totally alone. I’ve since learned that writing doesn’t need to be so solitary. True, there are times when it should be just you and the keyboard, but there are many times when you should be around and involve other people. For example. critiquing and feedback of your work – I have heard the opinion that a writer must write a million words before they have anything worth sending out. I would argue that a million words without any outside scrutiny doesn’t improve one’s writing much at all. The feedback around what works and what needs work […]
Read moreGet Published Episode 64 – Know Your Audience
I was very fortunate to attend a brand new Convention for Writers and Readers here in Calgary called “When Words Collide” a week ago. The convention had several VIP guests including Robert J Sawyer who agreed to be interviewed for the show. He talks about marketing and promotion in the Tips and Typos section. I also interviewed Marc Johnson. Marc is a self-published fantasy author living in the Bay area. He talks about why he made the decision to self-publish and how he is treating his writing as a business. Both authors talk about something I found very interesting and that is, knowing your market and targeting it. It’s an important lesson for me and one I think all authors […]
Read moreWriting Should Be Treated as a Business
Before I go too far into this post, I want to explain something about the title. The post is intended for those people who want to make a living as a writer. For those of you who write for the pure enjoyment of it, you can ignore most of what I’m about to say. For the rest of you… well, read on. The first thing we writers need to realize is that publishers, editors and agents are people just like us. They love, they have lives and, most importantly, they need the same essentials we do in order to survive. That usually means a requirement for money of some type. If they are professional publishers/editors/agents they must earn money through […]
Read more