February 6, 2013 – 12:50 pm
I have met a great many people who claim they want to be writers, but who don’t act like it. I have also met more than one professional writer who claims to want to quit his/her day job and go full-time as a writer, but who doesn’t act like it. And I’ve even met a [...]
First off, I am pleased to say that the three Kate and Cecy books will be going live as e-books on May 22. Stephanie Burgis did a lovely blog post on them. Which means that all of the backlist except the Enchanted Forest books are now available in nice, legal ebooks, one way or another [...]
October 12, 2011 – 6:30 am
Every so often, someone asks me if I work on more than one book at a time. It’s a more complicated question than most people think it is, because there’s work, and then there’s work. Writing comes in phases. Very long phases, but phases nonetheless. There’s six months to a year of writing the first [...]
February 27, 2011 – 6:21 am
Sooner or later, everyone gets stressed, and stress affects everybody’s writing, one way or another. There are a few folks whose writing is their escape from stress, who write more when they get more stressed and less when they get happy, but that doesn’t seem to be all that common among published writers (probably because [...]
August 22, 2010 – 3:58 pm
“I don’t have time to write” is one of the most common writers’ complaints, both from people who haven’t published yet and from seasoned pros. The statement means different things to different people, but the most common meaning is “There are a lot of other things in my life that are more important to me [...]
August 16, 2010 – 8:27 am
Every saga has a beginning, and this one begins four weeks ago, when my editor sent me a three-page, single-spaced revisions e-mail and a copy of the ms. for what is now Across the Great Barrier that was full of comment balloons. It didn’t arrive. We didn’t realize this for a week, because I was being restrained and [...]
The first thing you need to know about getting published is that the process is best described as interminably long stretches of boredom and anxiety, punctuated by moments of panic and frantic activity. And this applies to the whole process, not just the submission part. Most people who want to be professionally published figure out [...]
People make time for the things they love. That is why I am always a bit skeptical at first when people tell me that they can’t write because they have a day job…especially when their day job is a relatively non-demanding 40 hours per week. People have to make time for the things they love, [...]
November 14, 2009 – 11:59 am
Some people are afraid to exercise their talents, or afraid that if they try, they will fail and have to face just how little talent they have. But far more are just simply not interested enough. Writing a book sounds like a nice thing to do – the way learning to ski sounds nice, or [...]
Yesterday morning, my modem died the ultimate death. Dead modems turn out to be dreadfully hard to diagnose, or at least, that’s what I conclude after spending two hours on the phone to tech support trying to determine why my Internet connection was unstable. Add another hour to run out and get a new one [...]
And now for a quick look through the mailbag (fixing the comments took longer than expected, but they finally seem to be working, yay!). Some excerpts that seem like a good idea to answer here: From several people: “Will you be autographing/appearing in X area soon?” Answer: If it’s not listed on the web site [...]
A good many years ago, I was on a panel about the business side of writing. About half the panel were full-time writers; the other half still had day jobs. During the question-and-answer session, someone directed a question at James P. Hogan, one of the other full-timers on the panel:, something along the lines of [...]