Today, we’ll be looking at two authors who found themselves in money trouble: Patricia Cornwell and Neal Gabler. It is a truism to remember that persons who do one thing very well does not qualify them as experts on everything, especially when it comes to money. Mark Twain’s investments in a typography machine threw him […]
At first, the idea of having a file system seems ludicrous, maybe even pretentious. You’re writing short stories, maybe sketches. A couple of printed pages. Maybe keeping a notebook. Not much of a threat to your sanity, right? A year of steady writing, however, and the situation has changed. You have a file cabinet, notebooks […]
As you may have guessed, I’m writing “The Career Indie Author” in chunks. I already have a tentative table of contents written, and every time I have a spare moment, I sit down and hand write several pages of content. Building your indie publishing company takes time, and although the “CIA” covers a lot of […]
Tracking your work with the help of calendars, notebooks and lists is probably one of the most neglected aspects of being an author, and yet I don’t think we can live without them. We certainly can’t write effectively without them. I can hear the criticism in my head by now. Malcolm Lowry, for example, wrote […]
Late at night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I was thinking about the Career Indie Author and wondering ‘Who the hell is going to buy this book? Why would they?” Admittedly, it’s not the best question to ask when you’ve already written 43,000 words, but better then than when it’s published, right? So […]
Back in 1980s, Amy Dacyczyn began fulfilling her dream of having a large family and living in a pre-1900 New England farmhouse with an attached barn. She married a man who was in the Navy and who shared her dream, learned to scrimp and save, cut corners where she could, and succeeded. Then she started […]
Recently, Sarah Dimento lamented that she found herself stuck writing the first draft of her novel. Worse, she was stuck on the first chapter. For a month. She’s stuck in a familiar trap. She feels stuck about what she’s writing. She wants to do a good job at it. She doesn’t want to write crap […]
Being an indie author does not demand that you know everything about your profession before you publish your first book. Pastry chefs know how to make the desserts. The counter jockey at the fast-food joint knows everything about making hamburgers, running the french-fry machine, and running the cash register. Nobody expects a surgeon to operate […]
Last week, we looked at how mundane events and encounters can spark story ideas. This week, we’ll look at other sources for stories. I like to read and I like to watch movies, and so often I’ll read a book or watch a show and know that the story could have been, should have been, […]
Everywhere! The difficulty has never been to have an idea. Ideas are all over the place, so many of them that I have to kick them out of the way when I walk through a room. There they sit, whimpering, heaped high in corners, and begging to be chosen next. Ideas are easy. It’s converting […]