The prompt for today’s flash fiction comes from The Write Practice, by Joe Bunting. I was supposed to write about–well, I won’t tell you exactly what or reading the story would be extra-boring–while not looking at what I was writing. Limit: 15 minutes. I threw a journal over the top of my laptop so I…
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…
Secrets of Ebook Publishing Success and Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, by Mark Coker. Both of these are free ebooks. Mark Coker is the founder and current head guy at Smashwords. He started Smashwords when he and his wife had written the book Boob Tube, but–despite obvious promise–could not get an editor interested enough to publish…
The Ender Quartet, by Orson Scott Card, which includes Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, and was published by Tor between 1985 and 1996. There are plenty of other series-related materials, which I did not read. I figured 1,668 pages was enough. In fact, 706 pages might have been…
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…
This is number two of the four-part American Culture Series, in which I point out something in American culture that mystifies me, then apply it to my life (and yours) as a writer/publisher. For the first thread in the series, see What’s So Bad About Generalizations. I had already planned to write this particular blog…
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…
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, literary giant, died almost one month ago. Known affectionately as “Gado,” Marquez was first made internationally famous by his magic realism novel, One hundred years of solitude, and it remained his most famous and revered (a classic of the twentieth century), along with Love in the Time of Cholera. He won the…
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.…
Who Could That Be at This Hour?, the first book in Lemony Snicket’s four-part All the Wrong Questions series which acts as the prequel for the A Series of Unfortunate Events series. Published 2012 by Little, Brown and Company and illustrated by Seth. Normally, I would wait until I had read all the books in…
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…
The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley, published from 20015-2012 by Amulet Books and illustrated by Peter Ferguson. The entire award-winning, New York Times Best-selling series: The Fairy-Tale Detectives The Unusual Suspects The Problem Child Once Upon a Crime Magic and Other Misdemeanors Tales From the Hood The Everafter War The Inside Story The Council…
Parade’s End, by Ford Madox Ford. First published as a series of books, Some Do Not…, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up–, and The Last Post, in the 1920s. I read the Vintage edition of all four stories together, published in 1950/1978. All authors have their overused words. For Rowling in the Potter…
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 starving artist 