Digging in the Dirt of Life
I mentioned previously that I write organically (aka pansing, writing into the dark). I don't write with an outline or with any idea of where I'm going. I've tried outlining, planning, making my characters stick to what I want to do, but it always backfires. Catastrophically. I'm slowly closing in on Draft 2 of my... Continue Reading →
Stephen King was in my dream last night. He was doing a tour of small town bookstores and chatting to aspiring and emerging writers. Image by MidJourney I sat for a time near him as he dished out advice and heard the challenges of these small town authors. The bookstore was one of those with... Continue Reading →
We don't like change. We don't like the unknown. For some of us, we mitigate the unknown by planning. We pride ourselves on being able to see patterns that help us prepare for future events. We plan out the steps, the details, every contingency. Then things change. For those of who write, we want to... Continue Reading →
On every author group, at every event, I hear the same thing: "I'm a writer. I hate marketing. I spend so much time marketing when all I want to do is write." Yup. It's necessary evil of being an indie author. It seems like every second year I spend a significant portion of my time... Continue Reading →
We have images in our heads of our characters, of settings, of action sequences. What would these look like in real life? I was listening to The Creative Penn podcast a couple weeks ago. Joanna interviewed Derek Murphy and they talked about AI for art and images. I had a bit of time this afternoon... Continue Reading →
I tried to do NaNoWriMo a few years back. I lasted four days. It was all about word count. I needed to write everyday. Other people were doing this, why couldn’t I? Maybe if I just plotted and outlined…. I needed to be productive, dammit! Why wasn’t this working? Shit. The pressure was too much.... Continue Reading →
Available on Amazon. I just published my second book. I'm currently working on my third, fourth, and fifth books (the second 'Fate' book, a non-fiction, and a magic-induced romp through hilarity and incredulity novel). There might be a sixth in there because, hey, things change and tomorrow's a new day. I was asked recently how... Continue Reading →
I'm going to divert a bit here from my current streak of writing process posts and focus on the publishing. I am an independent publisher. I have published both of my books in print and ebook format. When I wrote "Memoirs of a Reluctant Archeologist" (2011), CreateSpace was complicated and not user-friendly. It was so... Continue Reading →
Why did I choose self-publishing? This is a question I get a LOT. I get this question mostly from people who are struggling to write. I get this question also from people who want to be traditionally published. I think it's important to point out the differences between these two different types of people and... Continue Reading →
Writers can often have all sorts of ideas, but getting them on the page can be a bit of an issue. When writers manage to put their ideas down, sometimes the ideas aren't what they envisioned: "WTF? This is NOT what's in my head!". This mismatch may be because of internal and external expectations. When... Continue Reading →
The Reluctant Archaeologist 