I’m putting up this post in the middle of the fear sequence as it appears on my website, not because the post fits in the fear cycle, but because I don’t want to monitor the news for weeks to see what, if anything, has changed. On June 9, here in the States, Democrats in the […]
Continue Reading
When I started these posts, I mentioned that the most fearful part of our industry is the movie/TV industry. With so many jobs and so much money at stake, only a handful of people seem capable of making decisions in that industry, and even they do so with great fear. The most courageous part of […]
Continue Reading
I did not expect to be writing this series of blogs the week that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifted the mask mandate for all vaccinated people. Ironically, the discussions around me everywhere—and I do mean everywhere—have all been about fear, in one form or another. I’m vaccinated, but I’m not ready […]
Continue Reading
On April 2, 2009, I started a blog with this: This post marks the beginning of an experiment. I will post sections of a work in progress—a book tentatively titled The Freelancer’s Survival Guide—here, on my website. If you go back and read that original post, you can see how tentative I am about the […]
Continue Reading
About the time I started planning this series, I got an email from a writer friend. The writer friend is one of those people who think they know business, but have never really bothered to learn much about it. Or maybe they’re the kind of person who reads the how-to, remembers the details, but misses […]
Continue Reading
The short version of this post: Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t write screenplays, even if someone tells you “you’ll make more money if you do.” The medium version of this post: Write screenplays only if you want to work in Hollywood. Otherwise, write the next book. The long version of this post: Brace yourselves, and settle […]
Continue Reading
A few weeks ago, I got a survey from the Global Licensing Group, the people in charge of the Las Vegas Licensing Expo. They wanted to know my opinion (and probably hundreds of other people’s opinions) about content. Is it important? Why is it important? How should I/we/they handle it? Oh, and am I a […]
Continue Reading
You’d think, after all these years, nothing about the changes in publishing could surprise me. And really, what happened this week didn’t surprise me as much as it surprised me because it happened to me. And it caused me to think of some things I hadn’t considered at all. As many of you know, I’ve […]
Continue Reading
My crystal ball is broken. When the world worked in a way that progressed, rather neatly, from one point to another, I could see as far as five years in the future. Sure, things would change. My health changed, for example, in the previous decade, and that caused personal changes. But the world I lived […]
Continue Reading
Believe it or not, there’s some great news in 2020. Reading became cool again. With all the other distractions shut down and people stuck inside, they picked up the books they had set aside because they were busy with other things. Most publishers and writers made it easy for readers in the early part of […]
Continue Reading