It requires a huge investment of time and years of immersion in the literary craft to write a viable novel or short story collection, and let’s face it: publishing these days is worse than a crapshoot. You may not find a publisher, and even if you do find one – or if you take the…
Category: Blog
Coping with Rejection: a 12-Step Program
Rejection can take many forms. For some of us, it’s our short fiction being turned away by one magazine after another. For others, it’s agents rejecting our novels at the query letter, partial, or full manuscript stage. And if you go the indie route, it can rear its ugly head as poor sales or harsh…
How Busy is Too Busy?
For writers, and most other people, this is an individual question. How many things you work into your schedule, and how much time you choose to spend not writing, is predicated by your life and will never be like anyone else’s. If you’re like Corrine O’Flynn, the coordinator for the Colorado Gold Conference, you must…
The Big Wait: What to do when you have nothing to do
So here we are. As of the writing of this post, I’ve found myself in a strange place. Limbo, some call it. That place of infinite waiting caught inexorably between supposed and longed for happiness, and that of dejection, unrequited feelings of elation and acceptance. “But Josh,” you may say, as I place these words in your mouth by…
Spring! Time for cloud-watching!
Puffy white cyber-sites feed creativity Ah, spring—longer days, warmer temperatures. I strive to invest my BICHOK (butt-in-chair-hands-on-keyboard) time daily, but there are times my brain wants to get off the gerbil wheel of word quotas and plots and marketing, and put in some time just staring at the clouds. There are “clouds” of sorts on…