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.
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, creativity hacker, editing, immerse or die, IoD, jefferson smith, making lemonade on 06 Nov 2014| 2 Comments »
Time for specific answers to burning questions. Just what were the WTF moments IoD slapped me with? Are they legitimate?
(If you’ve just joined, here’s where you can find Part 1 and Part 2 of this conversation.)
The book I submitted was Unraveling Time, which I still feel is one of my best books. It does, unfortunately, suffer from having one of the roughest opening sections I’ve ever written. There are reasons the opening is so rough. The reasons do not excuse or justify its roughness, but they may be instructive to any writer rushing toward self-publication.
So below, after some backstory, I will examine the IoD charges, set down my verdicts, and wrap up this series of posts.
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, creativity hacker, editing, immerse or die, IoD, jefferson smith, making lemonade on 05 Nov 2014| 1 Comment »
There are several things that, in younger years, I might have done with such a scathing critique as I received last week from Jefferson Smith’s Immerse or Die report.
(If you’ve just joined, Part 1 of this conversation can be found here.)
Most of these reactions are defensive in nature and, as such, they bring nothing to the table aside from their protective value. As I enter my dotage, I can safely say that one thing I’ know is this:
I can always learn if I want to do so, and I will never learn when I don’t.
And in this case, I want to.
So, here’s what I will not be doing in response to my IoD Smackdown.
(Writers: Pay close attention to Item #4 on the list.) (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, creativity hacker, editing, immerse or die, jefferson smith, making lemonade on 04 Nov 2014| 6 Comments »
This post is hard to write. It’s uncomfortable, and not a little embarrassing. No. More than that. It’s bloody humiliating. I debated whether or not I could ignore the situation entirely and pretend as if nothing had happened — Move along. Nothing to see here. — That, however, would have been neither honest nor productive, both of which are planks in the platform I use to run this blog.
And so, this post. (more…)
Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged Characters, creative writing, editing, novel writing, publishing, Writing, writing techniques on 20 Mar 2014| 4 Comments »
Character study…
Some people do not have a volume switch.
Or, to be more precise, there are some people whose volume switch is stuck at ten.
Or eleven. (more…)
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, editing, memoir, novel writing, revision letters, Writing, writing techniques, writing tips on 13 Feb 2014| Leave a Comment »
Letters are nice things to get in the mail.
I’m not talking about bills or street-spam from your local dentist. I mean letters. Honest to God Letters, written by a person, meant for you and you alone.
Well, mostly…
There’s one kind of letter that I hate to get:
The Revision Letter.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 