I’ve known for a while that having a story published or even more difficult, landing a literary agent, is a matter of luck AND hopefully — perseverance. Over the years I’ve done pretty poorly in the luck department as door prizes, lotteries and give-aways stubbornly elude me. No matter how good the odds, I don’t win. […]
Why Perseverance Leads to Luck Read More »
Today on FB, one of my writing acquaintances commented that writers are often weird and don’t act like “normal†people. This eccentricity is caused by the artistic brain, researchers have found. Nowhere else is this more obvious than when communicating with non-writers. How do you explain that you just spent four hours revising a few
Writers are weird! Read More »
Writing is like a rollercoaster, some days you’re up and some days you’re down. No other activity gets me this involved and emotional. Writing Routine Thousands of web pages give advice on writing routines, when to write, how long to write, how many pages, not too much, not too little. Some say you should
For the past one-and-a-half years I’ve been meeting with a few dedicated individuals who — like I — are slightly crazy with the vision to break into the world of professional authoring. What started as a continuation of a workshop has morphed into a serious bi-weekly meeting that none of us miss unless we have
Ode to my Writers Group Read More »
Moving to a Writing Career Full-time If you know anything about the writing profession you know it isn’t easy. Until one breaks through the glass ceiling, it is a work of love and lots of discipline. One must write no matter what happens with the work that is produced. At least that’s how I feel.
Here we go. A number of people test-read my novel; fiction writing classes and writers group have reviewed and critiqued. I edited and tweaked, rewrote the query’s hook sentence more times than I care to count. Have read aloud, to myself and to others. Now begins the chapter of uncertainty, of icy showers of rejections.
Jumping into the Water Read More »
Writers know that perfection is a fleeting goal. As soon as you think you have made all the changes, edits and improvements to your piece, considered the feedback of your test readers and listened to the comments from your writer’s group, you read again and – find new things that need to be changed. When
Seeking Perfection Read More »
Years ago, when I was delving into personal growth and self improvement, I came across a wonderful tape series, “Field of Diamonds†by Earl Nightingale. One of the questions, he posed and which I had struggled with was happiness. Until then, happiness had been on my list of life goals. What I didn’t realize was
Writing and Happiness Read More »
After the third and forth round of edits, I am now working on another review while continuing to read all types of books. Some people suggest reading the genry you are writing in, however, others recommend reading across different genres and authors. I find that no matter what I read, I always pick up something. A clever
On Writing and Reading Read More »