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Needing a Reader and Copyeditor…
Fighting Myths Again… Beginning and early professional writers always seem to focus on needing to have editors and copyeditors and beta readers and everything else. Always overkill and usually, almost without exception, it also kills their writing and stories. Some background. This obsessive desire for editing and copyediting on novels comes from three places. — First, it comes from 1970s-1990s traditional publishing habits that have stuck around and passed around as needed like myths of a big tall walking snowman with a chainsaw. In other words, too stupid for reality in 2020, but still believed by those coming into the publishing profession. — Second place all this editing stuff comes…
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The Myth of Talent
Maybe One of the Most Deadly of All Myths… Talent is a measure of skill at a certain moment in time. So many writers use talent as an excuse to not do something. That excuse comes in a ton of different forms. “I already know that, so I don’t have to learn more.” “I’m not talented at doing (blank), so not going to try that.” “Dean and Kris can do this, but I can’t.” And on and on and on. Basically this talent myth grows out of fear, out of laziness, out of a person’s past. Using the talent myth in either direction will stop you, hold you back, and…
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Killing Another Sacred Cow… Having Fun Makes Your Writing Bad
Having Fun Equals Writing Poorly… Wow, I flat hadn’t seen that one before until a couple of really insulting comments on my blog I did about Mariah Carey having fun. Then it dawned on me that I bet a lot of writers think that if something is fun to do, it can’t have value, that it can’t be any good. Check in with yourself to see if you are one of those folks. Then ask yourself where you learned that myth. I know the myth about you must “struggle for your art” and that happy BS. But I had never flipped that slimy rock over and looked at the other…
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Earnings
I Have Wanted To Write About This For A Long Time… And now, with all the stuff with Data Guy and the new Author Earnings report and him starting up a new business to sell our business sales information to the highest bidders, I figure it was time. As many of you know, Kris and I spend a decent amount of time each week with workshops, helping writers move forward after their dreams, both on the business side and on the craft side of fiction writing. It helps us keep learning and we enjoy listening and engaging with both new writers and writers who are a ways down the road…
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Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing: #4… You Need an Agent to Sell a Book
This series of posts will turn into a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Publishing later this fall with an introduction. And then it will be followed by a book called Killing the Top Ten Sacred Cows of Indie Publishing. But first I wanted to put each myth or “Sacred Cow” up here again as I promised. This fourth Sacred Cow article (topic) was published here in 2009. Wow, has the world changed since 2009. Indie publishing was only a glimmer then and traditional publishing was turning ugly, so ugly that at that point, I was about ready to walk away completely and go back to playing…