Searching for Sugar Man, 2012, a Swedish-British documentary directed and written by Malik Bendjelloul and about musician Sixto Rodriguez. Perhaps you don’t know why I would be reviewing this movie for a writing and publishing blog. Well then, just hold on tight and I will tell you. After I tell you this. It seems like…
Sure, it sounds like a garage band, but it is really something that every indie author needs at the ready. It’s your platform toolbox, and it better be stocked. The deal is, no author can breathe a sigh of relief on their publication day, anymore. Even if you have solidified a nice publishing deal with…
A few days ago, my nine year old daughter received a letter in the mail. It was from her last year’s teacher. Now, my children are in a smallish Montessori school, which means that they switch teachers and classrooms only every three years, and each of these transitions is somewhat of a big deal. Both…
Don’t know if anyone has noticed under my “Events” tab, but I have been participating in the local Lit 101 for the approximately six months that it has been running. What is Lit 101? A night of flash fiction at the Francesca’s on Ninth Street in Durham, on the third Sunday of every month, at…
Magic Beyond Words: The J. K. Rowling Story, 2011. Available currently on Amazon Prime. First thing I learned: her name is pronounced ROE-ling, not R-Ow!-ling. I had no idea. Second thing: this movie is cheesy, sometimes painfully so. And yet, I did not want to turn it off. I guess I was willing to take…
When I was a kid, I was labeled “not sporty.” I was also never described as “adventurous,” that I can recall. Ideas of sporty and adventurous in my culture were limited to things like basketball and Lewis and Clark. As I got older, I realized a few things about that: one, sports are not limited…
Time for another writer-related movie review: Girl Most Likely (2012; originally Imogene). This one came completely out of the blue. Despite always having my writer-related-movie-radar up, I had not heard anything about it. My husband just randomly picked it off of Netflix because it has Kristen Wiig in it. We were, then, pleasantly surprised. Now,…
Last fall, when my youngest kid went off to kindergarten, I went full-time (six hours a day during school days) as a writer and publisher. The year turned into three novels at different stages of production: one is in the later stages of editing, and two are half-written. Now that summer break has arrived, I…
Some of these lessons, you just can’t be “taught.” The truth is, to be a good writer, and a good indie publisher, you have to have outside feedback, and then, miraculously, you have to know what to do with it. Because sometimes it’s not grammar or spelling or even A + B = C, but…
First things first: The Starving Artist has passed 100 posts and 800 followers! Also, we have passed one of the great, blog-tipping-points where–after a year and a half–the blog finally has its own momentum and we get actual comments (maybe some Shares, Tweets, Likes) on every post. Woo-hoo! Now, if I can only usher it…
I know that many of the people who follow my blog are not writers or publishers. I also know that, as a writer, I often get in a discussion (about being a writer) with people who have a very hard time understanding what I am talking about. This is because of the revolution you didn’t…
Welcome to this Monday’s edition of the My Writing Process Blog Tour. Don’t know who’s been following along, nor how long it has been chugging, but it is now my turn. You can try and track the thread backward, or wait to go forward as each new Monday arrives. Either that or just read this…
My last post was on Maya Angelou, the renaissance woman. I would like to be a renaissance woman. I have a lot of interests, and I wouldn’t mind leaving my footprint in the worlds of writing (as a novelist, memoirist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, publisher, blogger, and essayist), art (as a painter, journalistic photographer, and illustrator),…
Far too quickly, I am writing yet another biographical eulogy for another literary giant. Maya Angelou died last week at age 86. She was another of my inspirations (I started out as a poet, did you know?) and her name is one even the lay-person would recognize. Not all too often does a writer gain…
Let’s call this the American Culture Series. It will be four parts, posed in the title as questions, and each one will address something that as a philosopher I find strange about American culture. Then I will explore it from the perspective of my job (and obsession) as a writer and publisher. And now we’ll…
Sometimes I wander Facebook and click on a share and wham! I am treated to something really cool. Other times, the ending is far less exciting, and I raise my eyebrows at a virtual wonder that has gone viral, but is total poo. A week ago, I stumbled upon something that was really neither, just…
One of things about this brave new world of modern publishing is that we are always learning: learning from each other; learning from our mistakes; learning from the things we have done right. I accidentally did something right in the social media/publicity department the other day. Now you can learn one little thing from me.…
Yeah, that’s right. I “won” Camp NaNoWriMo. That means I wrote 50,000 words during the month of April, toward a brand-new novel. I am on Chapter Seventeen: Trades and Deals, of approximately twenty-seven, which means I am 50,187 words into approximately 70,000-80,000. As a note, I also managed to write more than 15,000 words in…
In the writing world, much of our advice becomes trite. Partly, I think, this is because it is true and therefore gets batted around so much it becomes tattered and, at times, useless. For example, my last post was about Write what you know. I have the feeling I could have written the first two…
The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, third edition. Written by Christopher Vogler and based on the works of Joseph Campbell. Third edition published in 2007 by Sheridan Books. I read this book for work. I am a novelist, so I had to self-edit as I went, since it is written with a strong bent…
the starving artist 