Sixteen months ago, in September, 2014, I began shopping my latest story. It had been a long time since my last go-round marketing a short story, and while a lot had changed, a lot had stayed exactly the same. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘creative writing’
To Market, to Market
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:
- Writers worrying about how much effort they should put into marketing their books.
- Writers’ efforts at marketing their books doesn’t work.
Found Time: Living Without Social Media
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…)
The Moon of Morning Mist
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
Writerly Update: Define ‘Interesting’
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:
- validation on my writing
- several rejections on my writing
- bad news on the job change front
- an invitation to submit a book to a trade show
Filling the Gaps: Online Courses in Editing
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.
School of Blog
Posted in Writing, tagged blogging vs writing, creative writing, editing techniques, essay structure on 12 Jun 2015| 8 Comments »
In my last post, I suggested that blogging steals time better spent writing novels. The flip-side is what blogging has taught me about writing.
So, what have I learned?
In the past three years, I’ve published over 550 posts here, racking up over 400,000 words, so the first thing I’ve obviously learned is how much I actually can write when I don’t think I’m actually writing. The second thing is that blogging is writing, just a different form.
But these are about having written, and aren’t useful when writing. What have I learned that I can use while I write?
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 