 DavidBCoe
read all posts by DavidBCoeA while back, I wrote a post on the value of ambition in which I discussed various forms of ambition and the ways each of them had benefited my art and my career. I would like to offer a companion piece to that first post, by focusing on a second quality — tenacity — that a) has served me well over the years, and b) manifests itself in different forms.
Tenacity: noun — Persistence in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired. (from Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed.)
There are actually a couple of other definitions of the word, but this is the one that most fully gets at the essence of what the word means to me. And hey, it’s my post . . .
Writing is an endeavor — and a profession — that can be absolutely brutal on those who tend to give [...]
Continue reading The Writing Life: The Value of Tenacity
 Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyAll right, really it’s weeks 3 & 4, but we’re going to refer to this as a 26 week series rather than complicate it any further. So: Week Two of what this job is like down there in the trenches!
Writing: Frankly not as much as I’d hoped, but in the region of 20K. As it happens, I’m keeping a live blog during the writing of my Kickstarter campaign novella “No Dominion”, so this is a literal play by play account of a day’s work:
Scanning over yesterday’s work, getting back in the swing of where I was. Changing a few words here and there to make the voice more Gary and less Jo-by-default. Walker Papers stories, whether they’re Jo or not narrating, seem to want to be told in first person, which makes writing other PsOV a kind of interesting challenge.
8200 words: …I swear to God, sometimes it’s [...]
Continue reading A Year In The Life: Week 2
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyWe talk a lot on MW about what habits you need to make as a writer, what goals you need to set, how there are give-and-takes all the way through a writing career. I’ve been considering a year-long themed set of postings that are simply A Year In The Life: trying to get some of the nitty-gritty of the work down in part so our readers here can get an on-going sense of what it’s like to do this as a career. I’ve got some other things to talk about today, too, but: would that be of interest?
The Other Things I have to talk about today tie into that, mind you, because as of today Faith Hunter and I have officially plunged into the fascinating new waters of self publishing. “Easy Pickings”, the crossover novella we wrote featuring both our main characters, Jane Yellowrock and Joanne Walker, has gone [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life
 Lucienne Diver
read all posts by Lucienne DiverI’ve already talked here at Magical Words about writing, about the query process and the path to first publication. I think there’s a lot less said about what comes after attaining that first book contract, and consequently, most authors don’t really know what to expect. Certain things can come as a rude shock. It’s not just getting published, but staying published that builds a writing career.
So, I’m going to touch on a few things here. Long-term thinking and career-building start even before you sign that first contract, when terms are being discussed and contract language haggled. It’s extremely important to have an agent who knows publishing contracts backward and forward who can look at things like option language (what you have to show next to your publisher and when they have to respond), competitive works, grant of rights, reversion, royalties and other percentages, etc. Just for example, if you’re [...]
Continue reading The Writer’s Journey
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