Reblogged on WordPress.com Source: Spotlight Author, Jan Hawke
Announcing my new editing service
Reblogged on WordPress.com Source: Announcing my new editing service
How To Be A Productive Writer – Guest Post By The Very Polific Barbara Tarn
Barbnara Tarn
First of all, let me thank Dan for having me. When he heard how prolific I am, he asked me for a guest post on how to be prolific… although I might not be the greatest teacher on the planet. But I’ll do my best. I can at least share how I do it.
Who am I? Well, first of all, I’m not a young writer, since I’m half a century. I’ve been writing since my teens, which doesn’t mean that everything I wrote is worth publishing. Quite the opposite. Some of those stories were totally dreadful, but I had a lot of fun writing them. You know the theory of “one million words of crap”? I wrote those and more before I came out of my writing cave, wondering why publishers weren’t knocking at my door. Duh.
Now, I come from the age of the typewriter. With…
View original post 674 more words
Character Development: Armed and Dangerous
It’s about 4:30 in the Morning as I type this, probably even later once I finally post it. Why would I be up at such an ungodly hour if I didn’t need to? Simple, my sleep cycle’s been off lately due to night hours at the Day Job and a bug that I seem to have picked up and am heroically fighting off. Seriously, we’re talking swords and shields here. 😉
Anyway…
Today, I want to briefly touch on the subject of how to arm your characters. Now, depending on a variety of factors, that could entail a wide range of selections. In my opinion, weaponry can be grouped into the following categories, but must be considered interchangeable This is not an all-inclusive list so feel free to add. I should note that I am not including the use of Magic in this discussion, but it is valid to note…
View original post 444 more words
18 Things You Need To Know About Editing And Proofreading
Although editing and proofreading are often mentioned together, they are two different things. Editing means improving writing to put the writer's message across in the best way. Proofreading means checking to ensure the writing is technically and aesthetically sound. Source: 18 Things Writers Need To Know About Editing And Proofreading
Writes and Wrongs #2: Basic Dialogue Punctuation
I love it! NO COMMA COMMANDOS!
When you teach you learn.
First, I want to take a tangent. If you don’t want to read my introduction drivel, click here.
I believe in those above words. Out of all the things I have learned and done over the years, the ones that stick are the things that I have taught to others and gone out of my way to research for the benefit of others. On the other hand, because I am an educator, I sometimes see things written wrong so often I unknowingly take on the quirks. It’s similar to how I have absorbed some of my husband’s redneck pronunciations to the point where people ask me more often where I’m from even though I have lived in this area my whole life! My accent for the area has always been a bit odd because I read so much as a kid, but now it…
View original post 1,038 more words
Using Brackets to Write Faster
Today I’m talking about a little trick that’s saved me so much time while writing first drafts, and I’m so excited to share it with you! Sometimes, it really is the simplest things that can make the biggest difference. Give this technique a try and let me know what you think! In her book, Writing Faster... Continue Reading →
Only 40 Self-Published Authors are a Success, says Amazon
The cat is out of the bag, finally we know exactly how many self-published authors make it big: 40.
Yes, that’s not a typo.
40 self-published authors “make money”, all the others, and they number in the hundreds of thousands, don’t. This interesting statistic, recently revealed in a New York Times article, applies to the Kindle Store, but since Amazon is in fact the largest digital publishing platform in the world, it is a safe bet that self-published authors are not doing any better elsewhere.
“Making money” here means selling more than one million e-book copies in the last five years. Yes, 40 authors have managed that, and have even gone on to establishing their own publishing house, like Meredith Wild. Her story is fully reported in the New York Times, here, and well worth pondering over.
That story reveals some further nuggets about the current…
View original post 730 more words
Recent Comments