“When I win the lottery Gonna donate half my money to the city So they have to name a street or a school or a park after me…” – Camper Van Beethoven, “When I Win the Lottery” * * * Most of the posts on The Juggling Writer are about writing. Some of the posts […]
The Learning Curve
Yesterday, I posted an entry about how writing well takes time. I’ve been very fortunate to be friends with writers, artists, and musicians. One of my musician friends is somebody I’ve known for over 25 years. In that time, I’ve seen him play bass, piano, and guitar. Yesterday on his Facebook page, he posted this […]
Monday Motivation: Learning as You Go
“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” – E.L. Doctorow * * * Writing well takes time to learn. One doesn’t sit down for a couple weeks and suddenly produce a bestseller. The time needed to produce 85,000 words of even bad writing takes longer than it takes most […]
Show, Don’t Tell (A Different View)
One of the best writing rules is: “Show, don’t tell.” It’s easy when writing to tell the reader things, but it’s best to show things happen and let the reader imagine what they will. I never considered this rule applying to being a writer, though. Until today. * * * Through my AvantGuild membership with […]
Monday Motivation: Happiness
Over the weekend, I replied to this post on Jane Friedman’s blog. (The entry is about happiness — in particular, about what we once believed would make us happy.) In replying, I wrote: I’ve found that I’m happiest when I do things I can do most days: going for walks and hikes, juggling, enjoying a […]
Walking Away
I see writers who talk about how much they really don’t like writing. And yet, they do it. They talk about how agonizing writing is, but act as though they don’t have a choice in the matter. They tell would-be writers to run as far away from writing as they can, as though the act […]
The Platform of Silence
J.D. Salinger is dead. I’m not going to talk about what an influence he was on my writing because it was just last year that I finally got off my lazy goddamn ass and read that stinking book he wrote–you know, that one everybody talks about and stuff; the really famous one with the rambling […]
A Delicate, Floating State
Things change. I grew up with three major networks on television and PBS. UHF channels were like cable…that is, until cable came around. I grew up reading books — I love books! Lately, though, most fiction and non-fiction I’ve purchased has been electronic, read on my iPhone with the Kindle app and Stanza. Later today, […]
Queries that Worked: Personal Writing Magazine
The last query letter of the week is a pitch sent to Writer’s Digest. I’d read Writer’s Digest on and off since I was in my late teens, and decided to send a query for a sort of travel piece: * * * [Note: My contact information is flushed right on my query] Christopher Gronlund […]
Queries that Worked: My Biggest Writing Regret
Since I had written a couple travel pieces for the Dallas Morning News and finally knew the editor on a first-name basis, I decided to send a pitch letter. A pitch letter is a query letter, but it’s a little different. Instead of sending a detailed query about a place you plan to write about, […]
Queries that Worked: The Screenplays
Today’s query letters aren’t letters at all. Sometimes the pitch is in person or over the phone (over the phone in today’s examples). * * * A friend I made when my wife and I were doing comic books bumped into somebody in development at two movie studios at the San Diego Comic Con. He […]
Queries that Worked: The Novel Pitch
Each day this week, I’m sharing a query letter that resulted in a request for more material, or a sale. In some cases — like today — I’ll share multiple queries. Today’s queries are for my first novel, Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors (HCWWPD). While HCWWPD didn’t sell, the queries I’m sharing did work, […]
Crowded
The first thing I ever wrote for submission was a comic book story for an anthology. (It was also the first thing I wrote that was accepted.) I met my wife in 1992 when we were both working for the same independent comic book company. Most of the people I hung out with at the […]