Memories
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How to: Your book and its competition
One of the most difficult parts of writing a non-fiction book proposal is putting together the competitive analysis (this goes by various names but is basically the section where you compare your book to others like it). People often make several common mistakes. 1. They write the competitive analysis after they’ve written the rest of the proposal —…
On finding good ideas
Let me tell you a story about good ideas. When I first started teaching developmental editing, I taught a beginning class for a year or two and it became very popular. The sponsoring organization asked me to teach an intermediate class. So I did that. Finally that asked if I could teach another class, again…
On characters winning the lottery
One of the things that annoys me in series characters is when they start off like the rest of us, living paycheck to paycheck, worried about the bills and how to pay for the car repairs and then halfway through the series they win the lottery and don’t have work anymore. I don’t mind when…
Ye gods!
When I started writing The Wanderer, I didn’t expect to wind up featuring gods to the extent that the story does. At first I thought of it as an historical romance set in medieval England, which would make all of the characters Catholic. Religion didn’t play that much of a role in the story itself,…
Why I’m okay with imperfection
One of my favorite tools is my dragon fountain pen; that is, a fountain pen with a dragon embossed on it. It’s a nice heavy pen that feels good in my hand and is easy to drive across the page, at least when I feed it the right ink and paper. Sometimes I think I…
Dojo Wisdom for Writers Book Club – Lesson #5
Welcome to the Dojo Wisdom for Writers Book Club! Every Wednesday, we meet to discuss one of the lessons in Dojo Wisdom for Writers. We’ll go in order, so it’s easy enough to follow along. Read the lesson, then read the blog post, then comment in the comments! Do feel free to comment on each…