As the Western Liaison for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, I schedule workshops about seven times per year on the Western Slope. It’s a long way from our side of the mountain to the Front Range, and the cost to attend events over there can be considerable. It’s a 500-mile round trip, about four hours each…
Tag: writing career
A Colorado Gold Fairy Tale
Once there was a new writer who attended the Colorado Gold conference. She’d been writing for about two years and had a completed manuscript, which she’d entered in the Colorado Gold contest, but it didn’t place. She’d come with fairly low expectations. Although her coworkers at the library where she worked were convinced this was…
Critique Groups, Part 2: When It’s Time to Quit
As I discussed last month, a critique group is a wonderful thing. I owe much of my technical and professional development over the last few years—as well as countless friendships—to my crit groups. I encourage all new writers to find a group and start critiquing as soon as possible, because in my experience, a good…
Being Teachable
I am reluctant to say this, as writing is a very meticulous skill with rules that must be learned and practiced, but here it is: I never graduated high school. Then life happened. I started writing a book in my early 30s. While charisma and the art of storytelling can take you far, if you…
Wag the Tail
I keep running across statements saying things like “The average self-published author only sells 500 books in his lifetime” or “The average author earns less than X dollars/euros/pounds a year.” Here’s the problem, and it goes back to the idea of the “long tail.” Average (or arithmetic mean) is a measure of central tendency. It’s…