Titles represent anywhere from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of words. They have to be worthy of all that hard work you put into your short story, novella or novel. And they must be marketable.
Whereas some writers find music (or any background noise) a distraction, I am fueled by the creative energy imbued in most melodies.
When one first decides to become a novelist, many important questions come to mind: What kind of stories should I write? Should I use my real name or invent something better? Can I pull off the pipe and beard look?
Some of the characters I’ve enjoyed writing about the most are an inch and a half tall.
At a recent Allied Authors of Wisconsin meeting, I was thrilled to receive unanimously positive feedback on a particular character in the chapter I read. The only problem is all that praise went to a pretty minor character who appears in just one scene in the entire novel and doesn’t even have a name.
If the first draft allows the writer to indulge in a carefree orgy of imagination, a Wild West of whimsy, and a devil-may-care series of experiments, then the editing process demands the writer to abstain, rein it in, and exorcise a host of demons.
In an earlier post, I defined a dabbler as someone who has yet to write one million words while simultaneously implying that the one million words benchmark might be less of a milestone than a state of mind.
At a recent guest lecture on self-publishing, a fellow attendee asked the featured speaker if she had any advice for someone who is working full time and doesn’t have four to six hours a day to devote to writing.