Category: The Writing Life
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Create Your Own Blog : Ferment VS. Specialize
The intent of your decision to create your own blog, the substance of your decision to create your own blog, and the consent of your blog’s audience all will ferment and begin to make a cohesive whole. That’s when things start to pick up steam. I don’t mean specialize. People talk all the time about…
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How to Blog : Consent
People happily pay for things that help them. Back when I lived in Joplin and had a car, I happily paid for oil changes even though I knew how to do it myself because it gave me more time to work on my writing. I happily pay for delivery when I’m in a rush because…
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Make a Blog : Content VS. Substance
I hate the word content. And as an author, I’m not really allowed to hate words because I need all of them. But you’re going to make a blog. (…and I don’t want you to make a blog that’s awful.) So maybe I should say I hate the way we use the word content. I’d…
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Blogger — Why are you intent on becoming one?
Why do you want to be a blogger? If your idea of being a blogger is just to sell ads or product or to look famous like some of these mom and lifestyle bloggers out there, let me discourage you now: there’s enough selling of crap and commodifying of art and personalizing of fame out…
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My Blog to Your Blog : Dissent
We’re doing a little series of short posts on why you probably shouldn’t blog. And if you insist on blogging as I have with my blog, this series will expose everything you should first consider before you start your blog. Questions welcome in an email. Featured Download: I’ve summarized this whole series into a checklist for you…
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Before You Open Blog : Intro
Confession: I’ve never thought of myself as a blogger. Many of you know my aversion to the word “blog,” my aversion to the false sense of immediacy created by that publish button, my desire for us all to reflect on language that has lasted and for us to spend less time spent gobbling up whatever…
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48 Action Adventure Literary Agents : Address Book
As I’m finishing up my fifth novel, the time has come for me to search once more for literary agents and some of them are action adventure literary agents. It seems kind of pointless for me to put in all of this work to findaction adventure literary agents and share it with no one. So…
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Worldbuilding Checklist for Writers
Every story needs a small, believable world but when you’re worldbuilding for an epic fantasy or historical saga, what can you do? You can apply a simple checklist to the other worlds and cultures that interact with the small, knowable world of your main character — both his foreign and his familiar. I’ll elaborate on each…
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251 Fantasy Literary Agents : an Address Book
As I’m finishing up my fifth novel, the time has come for me to search once more for Fantasy literary agents. It seems kind of pointless for me to put in all of this work to find fantasy literary agents and share it with no one. So I made an address book — a phonebook…
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Monomyth Definition: A Defense of The Hero’s Journey
Let me again pick up a standard that has fallen on our literary battlefield: the standard that marks the entrance of The Defender of The Common. It would seem a silly thing to need to defend common things, but in truth we have grown quite accustomed to tearing down good things simply because great things exist.…
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Letters to a Young Poet …via Email
The following letters to a young poet grew out of emails sent to a poet. He had recently sent me a three-stanza poem asking for critique. I also, by the end, quote from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet: ••• [Young Poet,] There are some really, really good lines in here and obviously the subject matter is hard…
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This Jodi Picoult Book VS. Writing Rules, Revised
Thanks to you guys, my new book is dominating that Jodi Picoult book: Of course, it probably won’t stay above the Jodi Picoult book and Pierce Brown’s work for long. Maybe it has disappeared into the void already. Regardless, it’s always nice to know you guys have my back. Us verses the literary world, guys. Actually,…