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FOR WRITERS

About Comments

August 6, 2018
Tags: comments, advertising, reading services, self-worth, writing success, art
Recently I've been getting comments posted to this page that are not written in plain text English. They appear to be some of the incomprehensible gobbledygook one gets when opening a text document or image using the incorrect program. The Authors Guild Sitebuilder program requires that I accept a comment before it can be published. If I cannot understand your comment, I have not and will not approve it. Plain Text English, please.

Some of the problems might be attempting to paste in commercial or political ads incompatible with the AG Sitebuilder program. Doesn't work. I don't take ads in any event (except for my own stuff, curiously). I may put in a link for someone else's stuff if I find it valuable. but that has nothing to do with the For Writers page. If you have a comment regarding a particular article, have at it. If your comments have to do with advertising reading services, don't post them here. Such services cannot tell you what your art is supposed to be. Early on, when I was searching for some assurance that I was not wasting my time, I sent a piece to a reading service. The response I got back was that I should quit writing and take training in driving a truck. A word to the wise.  Read More 
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Art, BS, Illness, Success & Rotten Apples

November 27, 2011
Tags: art, success, principles
I admit: There are times when I feel filled with the writing wisdom of the ages. All one need do is ask and I shall bless you with beginner, intermediate, or advanced sets of pearls from the fountainhead of literary profundity itself. At other times I feel so full of crap I could be the featured ingredient in a truck bomb of substantial proportions.

Observe: On October 23rd of this year, a shade more than a month ago, I blogged about defining literary success, and how defining it in terms of art, instead of money, is the path to true literary fulfillment, happiness, and sanity. So there I was, beginning a week ago until last night, on a hook because I was so frustrated that a certain book of mine is not a commercial $ucce$$.

"Hypocrite!" you shout from the battlements, or from your window if your castle has no battlements. Perhaps you only mutter it. In any event,  Read More 
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Nobody's Buying! What Do I Do?

October 23, 2011
Tags: sales, art, business
Writing the best stories of which you are capable
The economy is in the crapper, the promised turnaround is out there somewhere hiding with "prosperity is just around the corner," losing pro ball players are getting multiple millions, and long-established professional writers are on seemingly permanent raman noodle diets. Editor George H. Scithers once told me that, in tough economic times, books and magazines have to compete with beer, and when it comes to a choice between beer and something to read, well, bet your investment dollars on Bud.

Where does that leave writers? Okay, the big-name blockbuster writers, the airport newsstand authors, those blessed by Imus and Oprah, might possibly see a slight decrease in sales. Perhaps they might have to put off the diamond-studded yacht until next year. They are not running from the wolves.

The so-called "midlist authors," however, are wolf meat. As it was explained to me once, "midlist author" is a term of sales art used by marketers to avoid identifying a publisher's other-than-bestselling-writers as "bottom list" or "bottom-of-the-barrel." The reality, however, is that the vast majority of professional freelance writers are "bottom list." And don't get your nose out of joint--I number myself among them. Read More 
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