Tag: Musing
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Deep Dive
Have you ever found yourself reading a book & wishing you’d already done so a year or two before? Well, that’s my current experience with Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer, the managing editor & copy chief at Random House. His take on the dos & don’ts of copy editing is both insightful & hysterical. The…
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To Review Or Not To Review
Last week I finished my second book review on Goodreads (Nightshade Academy by Mel Torrefranca). My main motivation for doing so—as I wrote in the review itself—was to “expand my focus beyond my usual genres (in this case, into that of YA fantasy-thriller) and the tendency I have to avoid reading anything but standalone novels.”…
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Categorical Denial, Part II
In my last post, I described my two choices for addressing the new-to-me rule in KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) that restricts an independent author to three categories instead of choosing up to ten as I did with my first self-published novel, Pearl Fields & the Oregon Meltdown. Last week, I mentioned my two choices at…
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Categorical Denial, Part I
In my last post, I used the metaphor of spinning plates to describe how I feel about juggling everyday life with my writing routine—fiction, this blog, & social media posts. What I neglected to add to that brief list was the business side of being an independent author. No surprise there since I’ve been known…
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Spinning Plates
I remember as a kid watching a juggler balance more spinning plates on sticks & his body than I ever thought possible. While most everyone else in the crowd was fixated on another, more risqué, street festival act, I couldn’t stop watching his antics like pretending to stumble before catching a falling plate at the…
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Something From Scratch
I recently started rereading Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. Not exactly sure why I picked it up—other than the possibility that one of my journal explorations about my current writing process reminded me of something from one of his essays. Even though I’m only a third of the way through it,…
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Comment Tango
As I close in on my two goals of polishing the first 23 episodes of my upcoming serialized novel & honing the book description, it’s time to turn some of my writing attention elsewhere. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, once I release the first four episodes sometime in mid-October, I’ll have nearly two months…
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Midway Mark
Looking back over my previous posts, I realize when it comes to writing, most of my attention centers on process instead of product. No surprise there, but I decided to try shifting that slightly. So, I took a hard look at the scheduling side of setting up my upcoming serialized novel on Kindle Vella. With…
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The Luddite Ring
I can’t help but notice more & more references to the benefits of becoming a social media Luddite. The trend to openly embrace avoiding social media seems to be gaining steam in some quarters, even while more tech advances & opportunities dominate the lives of those in the mainstream. It’s only when I grapple with…
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Message in a Bottle
Not sure what really drives me on to write these posts. Granted, early on the volume of traffic on my blog was substantial enough to make the writing time I dedicate to these posts worthwhile. But given that the number of visitors & views has steadily declined over the past few months toward the single…
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Pistachios
Nothing like spending the better part of an April morning sitting on a porch basking in the sun, cracking open pistachios, & taking in the spectacular blue sky. As the pile of shells grew ever larger, I found myself imagining one story after the other involving pistachios . . . using them as metaphors, historical…
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The novelty of it all (update)
Time to pause & celebrate a bit since I’ve nearly reached the halfway mark of my first foray into serializing a novel. I’m happy to report it’s going even better than I’d hoped (surprise, surprise). Dividing longer chapters into shorter episodes has proved fairly easy, but deciding what to keep, cut, or add in order…
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The novelty of it all
Time to pause & celebrate a bit since I’ve nearly reached the halfway mark of my first foray into serializing a novel. I’m happy to report it’s going even better than I’d hoped (surprise, surprise). Dividing longer chapters into shorter episodes has proved fairly easy, but deciding what to keep, cut, or add in order…
