Posted in Books, Writing, tagged book marketing, creative writing, marketing your book, Writing on 21 Jan 2016| 7 Comments »
I’m not telling you anything new when I say that the publishing industry has changed a great deal in the last twenty years. However, throughout these decades of upheaval, there are two things I’ve observed that have remained pretty damned consistent:
Posted in Movies, Writing, tagged Axanar, CBS, copyright infringement, Paramount, Star Trek on 04 Jan 2016| 5 Comments »
Miss me? Did you even notice I was gone? Hehe…Probably not.
Either way, it was an interesting holiday fortnight, writing-wise—a couple of rejections, a friend had his book series canceled, another friend’s newest got some great reviews, and one of my books is going out-of-print—but the one piece of writerly news that really sparked a discussion was a bit involving CBS, Paramount, and Star Trek.
You remember Star Trek, right? That other sci-fi mega-franchise. The one with good writing? The franchise that actually did break new ground?
Yeah. That one. Star Trek.
Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged creative writing, social media, unplugging, writerly habits on 24 Nov 2015| 4 Comments »
Update on my Social Media Detox:
I’ve done a “cleanse” like this before, and as always, I’m surprised by how much time suddenly appears in my day. But this time I’ve noticed something else.
I am thinking like a writer again.
Seriously. (more…)
Posted in Seattle, Writing, tagged creative writing, Seattle, seattle weather, vignettes on 22 Oct 2015| 2 Comments »
Seattle.
It is late October, early November, when Dawn puts on her grey scarf and each day arrives in soft focus, born in muffled softness.
The edge of the world is only a stone’s throw away. Green needles and rusted leaves alike gleam in the moisture-laden air.
Above, southbound geese call with muted trumpets, navigating the blanketed skies, seeking grey waters beneath grey fogbanks.
All is cotton and wool, steely but soft, quiet and chilled, both bright and dim.
I walk dew-slick streets, and feel that here, surrounded by these layers of mist, magic is possible.
k
Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged career change, freelancing, job search, medical insurance on 01 Oct 2015| 14 Comments »
Last Thursday, around midnight, my wife was hauled down a long, lonely corridor, knocked unconscious, and stabbed five times.
At least that’s how her surgeon described it.
Posted in Writing, tagged America Star Books, career change, creative writing, editing, job search, Miami Book Fair, PublishAmerica, rejections, short stories on 03 Sep 2015| 1 Comment »
It’s been an interesting week, writing-wise, and while no, it wasn’t “interesting” in the sense of “Oh God Oh God We’re all going to die!” it was interesting in the sense used by the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.
This week I received:
Posted in Writing, tagged ACES, career change, copy editing, creative writing, editing, online courses, Poynter on 13 Aug 2015| 9 Comments »
A large part of my “journey” from IT professional to editor is bolstering my own confidence level. While I’ve edited, copy edited, and proofread over a dozen novel-length books and scores of shorter works — both for myself and for others — I haven’t done this work as an editing professional. That, when put alongside the generally unstructured education I received in grammar (Hey, it was the ’60s; we didn’t burden ourselves with rules), means that while I have an innate command of the English language, I sometimes struggle to put into words exactly why an error is, in fact, an error.
The curse of being an autodidact is that I can miss things in my self-learning curricula, and that means I often fret about the completeness of my skill sets. The old 80/20 adage states that most of the time (80%), you only use a small portion (20%) of the skill set; conversely, the lion’s share of the skill set is seldom needed. In teaching myself a new skill, it’s relatively easy to learn that first twenty percent, but it is deuced hard to uncover the secrets of the infrequently used remainder.
As you can imagine, these gaps erode my confidence. Big time.
To counter this, I’ve been studying like mad. I quizzed my editor friends about classes and coursework, and received some guidance on what is of value and what might not be. Some suggestions were easier to implement than others.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 