I feel like I just got home from a long, long, long business trip. I checked out on the writing and publishing world on Monday night, and I’m finally returning—happily, I might add. But I realized I have some cleanup to do. I need to let you know things, which I will do over the […]
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In November, 2007, the members of the Writers Guild of America (East & West) walked off the job as part of a contract negotiation with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. (AMPTP) That strike was consequential for a variety of reasons. But what caught me at the time, and catches me now, was […]
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It took me a long time to learn that negotiation is all about strength. If you say, My agent or my lawyer too many times in the middle of a negotiation, the person on the other side of that negotiation won’t want to talk to you. You’re not the one with power.
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Recently, someone asked me why Dean and I continue to teach writing workshops. Most established writers don’t, unless they’re asked to address a college class or spend a week at Clarion. Even then, they’re following someone else’s format, and simply putting their spin on it. Dean and I have developed an entire curriculum, both online […]
Continue ReadingWriters obsess about how many people they have on their newsletter, whether those names are “good” names, what kind of marketing they should do for those people, what kind of writing they should do because of the newsletter, whether the last marketing campaign brought in “good” names that converted to real dollars, whether five impressions with click-throughs and buys are better than fifty impressions with click-throughs and no buys yet.
If we end up obsessing too much…
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It used to be that everyone on the panel would give the same answer to basic questions. On the basic how-to-get published questions, there was only one answer, and it was the same for writer after writer after writer. Now, the basics differ depending on who you talk to. We all agree on craft issues. But when we move to how to get published, writing panels actually get contentious….
Continue ReadingLast week, twenty-one professional writers joined me here on the Oregon Coast for an intensive advanced workshop in writing fantasy fiction. I learned a lot, even though I was teaching the class, and I hope to share some of that with you all down the road. The writers were amazingly good. (You can see photos from […]
Continue ReadingWe just finished the anthology workshop, the largest workshop we do in person. Forty-six attendees, eight instructors, seven days, and 250 manuscripts to read and discuss. All of the attendees are professional writers in one capacity or another (technical writers, nonfiction writers, fiction writers), so the manuscript quality was high—often award-quality. Oh, the discussions. Oh, […]
Continue ReadingAs I got deep into this discoverability series, I promised that I would examine marketing strategies from passive to active. I have to abandon that promise now, because most everything we’ll discuss from here on out will be active. By active, I mean you’ll have to do something—write something, design something, or pay for something—and […]
Continue ReadingI finished my second novel (as an adult) on the day my best friend from high school gave birth to her second child. My friend called me from the hospital to tell me the great news and then, because she was a sweet woman and because she was from the upper Midwest, she reflexively asked […]
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