FORGET THE MUSE
Today I wanted to talk about the process and act of writing. What I mean mainly by that is the simple craft of regularly putting pen to paper. As Stephen King famously said, “Amateurs wait for the muse to come. The rest of us get working.” That is so incredibly true. When I was a creative writing undergrad at San Francisco State University, like many young [writing] students, I thought that, when the ‘muse’ came, I could then write the Great American Novel. Right? The truth i
ELLEN BROCK: ON FREELANCE BOOK EDITING
Ellen Brock—a freelance developmental and copy book editor like me—posted a blog article from September of last year about the seriousness of being a book editor. She talked about how it’s not about being a ‘passionate’ editor but rather a hardworking, logical one. She said: “When you go to a mechanic, you don’t expect them to fall in love with your car. And you’re not going to accuse the mechanic of being ‘terse,’ ‘cold,’ or ‘bitchy’ when he tells you that your car is totale
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN BY PAULA HAWKINS
I want to talk about the debut novel that was released in January, 2015, called THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, by British author Paula Hawkins, because I think it highlights a few key points that I have been trying to make for ages. For those of you who live on the moon or simply, for whatever reason, haven’t read the novel: go buy it. It’s not so much that it’s the best written book ever released (it’s very much not), but the plot will blow your mind. I’m not going to go over the pl
MEMOIR VS AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I’ve posted about this before and I do it again. The reason it’s on my mind is that I currently have a client—a phenomenal writer—who is dealing with this in his book. Here’s a quote from Writer’s Digest on the subject: “An autobiography focuses on the chronology of the writer’s entire life while a memoir covers one specific aspect of the writer’s life. So, if I chose to write about my complete life up to this point—including growing up in Cincinnati, my time in New York, the
