5 Undying Myths About Published Writers And Their Eerie Powers

“What’s that, you say? Please send you my six volumes of unpublished gothic poetry? I’d be delighted!”

To the unpublished writer — and maybe there’s another level here we’ll call underpublished — life on the other side of the divide can seem like a place of rarefied air.

This can lead to some erroneous assumptions about [...]

Eight Reasons Your Story Might Not Be Selling That Have Little To Nothing To Do With Whether The Story Is Any Damn Good

Sometimes stories get rejected. It happens to good stories. It happens to bad stories. It happens to my stories, and your stories, and pretty much everyone who isn’t Neil Gaiman’s stories. That being said, there are reasons behind every rejection, even the rejections of stories that might be pretty good. They’re not always good reasons. [...]

Answering questions from an aspiring writer

I recently agreed to be interviewed by a college undergrad for one of her classes. Their assignment was to interview someone working in a career that interested them. Since that interview won’t see the light of day outside of the student’s class, I thought I would post it here in lieu of my usual blatherings.

What [...]

Gratitude, And The Reason You Might Never Have Realized It’s Vital For Writers

At almost every level, except maybe the upper echelons of bestsellerdom, writers seeking to establish professional relationships face a signal-to-noise ratio so lopsided it’s like pitting a mouse against an elephant.

Guess which critter the writer is.

The only way to cut through the noise and make yourself stand out is to do awesome work. And once [...]

How To Lose Readers And Alienate People

Now you just stand there and think about what you’ve done.

[I'm not keen on the idea of reruns, but better that than giving the day a miss. Today, the past couple of weeks have led up to this question: to euthanize or not. I hope you understand. Here's one from 13 months ago that [...]

How To Lose Readers And Alienate People

Now you just stand there and think about what you’ve done. (Photo by Richo.Fan http://www.flickr.com/photos/richo-fan/ / CC BY 2.0)

An open letter to Anonymous:

I don’t know your name. I didn’t ask, and our mutual acquaintance was tactful enough not to volunteer it. So it’s not impossible you and I have crossed [...]