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Publishing: 10 Years from Now
You’ve read everybody else’s predictions. You’ve heard from the experts. The insiders. The pundits. Well, goody for you. Those prognosticators may have knowledge. They may have expertise. They may even have credibility. But what they don’t have…is a really good imagination. So forget all those boring predictions and trust mine instead. They’re based on years of…okay, fine. They’re not based on anything at all. I just made ’em up this morning. In ten years… Those infinite monkeys with their ubiquitous typewriters will have successfully written Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and subsequently declared it “notably inferior to The Tempest.” Then they will throw feces at each other. 73 percent of people…
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First Impressions: Common Sense Advice for Writers
Long before Twitter made the under-140-character limit de rigueur for quotable quotes, someone said “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” This is good advice. What it means in practical terms is that if I greet my new boss with “I sure hope you’re not the same as the old boss – she was a real witch, and I don’t mean witch but I’m trying to be polite by replacing the letter ‘b’ with a more acceptable letter” or “Is it okay if I drink heavily on the job? Because I can only work drunk since this place really sucks” I’ll probably miss out on that…
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Soon, But Not Yet
As most of you probably know, Real Life has been rather difficult these past few weeks. My premie granddaughter, Ayla, has been fighting for life since she was born on November 11, sixteen weeks early. I’ve been spending much of this time focusing on the needs of my young son, his equally-young girlfriend and their tiny, beautiful little girl. Sadly, it looks as though her fight is nearly over. Until things settle down here, I just can’t find a lot of emotional energy to write witty, wise things for this blog. However, this blog and its associated community of loyal subjects are important to me. I have a dozen posts…
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From the Office of Admissions
Let’s not call them confessions, okay? Because that reeks of guilt. And for many of the following, I feel no guilt whatsoever. I admit… I am immediately turned off by best-selling books because I hold fast to an erroneous belief that for something to be popular, it must cater to the lowest common denominator and I prefer to believe I am far above that line. I am not above that line. I pick up a book based on its cover and only rule out a possible purchase if the blurb on the back bores me to tears. Otherwise, I’ll buy it and give the author every opportunity to surprise me.…
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Some Books on Writing That Don’t Really Exist
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A Guest Post Elsewhere
First of all, if you’re coming here from @katdish’s “Hey Look, a Chicken” blog, don’t click on the link below. It’s just going to take you right back to her post and then you’ll be stuck in an infinite loop and will eventually die of starvation. Or boredom. But since you’re here, feel free to look at older posts about writing and stuff. Just don’t click the link in the next paragraph. I mean it. But if you’re coming here from somewhere else, go ahead and click this link so you can read what I wrote for Kathy’s blog. It’s a post called “The Unbearable Being of Linus” and it’s…
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When Editors Go Bad
If you’ve been reading my little blog for any length of time, you already know that editors aren’t prefect. [Yes, I just wrote “prefect.” Squirming yet?] As evidence of this, I present to you some of the most common mistakes editors make. By “editors” I mean me. And by “mistakes” I mean errors in judgment prompted by sleep deprivation, excessive drinking, lack of confidence in the job, or plain ol’ incompetence. I’ve given each of the editorial screw-ups a title, but these are only my made-up titles and are not the terms officially sanctioned by the National Governing Board of Freelance Editors (NGBFE), which I don’t think exists, but if…