Hi Folks, This will be a simple post, but possibly the most helpful one you’ll ever read. When a friend and professional writer (Alison Naomi Holt, see Alison Holt Books) stopped by the writing seminar I was conducting while she was in town last month, she said this tidbit of advice was “the greatest gift” I had given her. If you’re a writer, chances are you’ve gotten bogged down. This happens a lot and it happens … Read more
Hi Folks, First, a housekeeping note. If any of you want any of my nonfiction books on writing, poetry collections, or fiction, you can get them all for 1/2 price today and tomorrow at Smashwords. To see what’s available, just visit My Smashwords Page, scroll down, make your selections and check out. You can purchase Kindle, Nook/Apple or PDF files all in one place at Smashwords. Now let’s get down to business. Writing is the only … Read more
Hi Folks, As promised, in this one we’ll deal with the persona. First, again, let’s all get on the same page. A lot of folks believe a pseudonym is a persona and vice versa, but if that’s true (for them) they aren’t using it right. You’ll remember that a pseudonym (pen name) is something you might choose to use when you want to publish something without allowing others to know you’re the author, or perhaps you … Read more
Hi Folks, Okay, this post is gonna be about The Care and Cleaning of Pseudonyms and Personas, Part I: The Pen Name. As usual, I’ll start with a definition. A pseudonym is a pen name. It’s something you use when you want to publish something without allowing others to know you’re the author, or perhaps you want to let them know selectively. Some writers use a pseudonym because doing so makes them feel cool or makes … Read more
Hi Folks, Originally I didn’t intend to revisit this topic, but I received a great deal of discussion on it. If you followed the comments, you saw the tip of the iceberg. The rest were to me directly via email. And that’s fine, really, but if you could leave a comment in the comment form below, it would make search engines place my website on a higher level of consciousness or something, especially the god-like Google. … Read more
Hi Folks, I mentioned in an earlier post that as part of my retraining as a writer, I’m learning to trust my subconscious to write the story. I want to be clear: this is not the “freewriting” technique most of us have heard about. In freewriting, the writer (usually a student) is told to ignore or “don’t worry about” grammar or syntax or punctuation or capitalization. The task is just to get the words on paper … Read more
Hi Folks, Yeah, this is kind’a like my previous post, or at least it looks like it on the surface. The previous post was Ideas and this one is Story Starters. In the previous post I talked about where ideas (story starters) come from. In this one I’m going to actually give you some story starters. Please feel free to use any of these that make you want to finish the story. They are all original … Read more
Hi Folks, Welcome! Let’s ask and answer that timeless question: Where do writers get ideas? Harlan Ellison, upon being asked that very question, said he gets all his ideas exclusively from a small shop in Schenectady. Would-be (wannabe) writers don’t want to hear the real answer, yet here it is again: Where do we get ideas? Everywhere. You just have to pay attention. You’re a writer. Every moment you should be listening and looking for ideas, … Read more
Hi Folks, Let’s get right into it. What keyed my own retraining and my desire to share this and the other posts in the Professional Writer series? I recently read Dean Wesley Smith’s very short book, How to Write a Novel in Ten Days. He ghosted a complete 70,000 word novel, under contract, in ten days. He blogged about the experience as he did it, then published those blog posts as the book. And yes, he … Read more
Hi Folks, Soon I’ll begin a blog post series on being a professional writer. As a preface, this post will provide an overview. If you have friends who are writers, please tell them about the series. This will be an important series for anyone who is serious about being or becoming a professional writers. Generally, I’m going to take a different tack with these posts too. Instead of telling you what I think you should do, … Read more