5 Reasons Why Writing Is Hard Work

Today is the day we write about something beginning with the letter “W” as part of the grueling race that is the “A to Z Blogging Challenge”.  When I think of today’s chosen letter, I can think of nothing else but the thing I love most: writing. There is a current boon of self-published writers

Organic Unity: A Good Novelist’s Added Edge

As an English teacher, I have read and taught much great literature.  I have a stack of great writing to draw from when writing my own stories.  What makes these writers great is their ability to write organically unified text. A novel has organic unity not just when the story is well conceived, but when

How to Network Your Writing Platform

If you are a writer and you have chosen not to network because you don’t have time and you are sitting in your writing cave, churning out tomes of material that few people see, then come out into the sunlight of social media and blogging and grab a shovel.  There is work to be done.

Using Twitter Mentions to Increase Blog Traffic

I was averaging 45-50 hits a day until the last two days.  I decided to try a little experiment after hitting upon this sort of by accident. It seems to work pretty well.  If you don’t believe me, then look at these blog stats: What I did was simple.  I started looking around my desktop

The Hype Cycle: How Self-Publishers Will Survive

I’ve been reading a mass of articles lately about the “hype of self-publishing” and how the industry is currently in a peak of hype about the idea that anyone with an idea who can string sentences together can publish and be as big of a success as Amanda Hawking or John Locke. There is a

Self-Publishing: Some Advice About Marketing from Scott Steinberg

There is a great article on porfolio.com about Scott Steinberg whose recent book “The Modern Parent’s Guide to Kids and Video Games” is generating buzz in the self-publishing world because it is so varied in price.  There is a printed copy from Lulu.com for $17.99, the iBooks, Kindle and Nook versions are $3.99 and he is also

The Versatile Blogger Award

Apparently, I have been nominated for “The Versatile Blogger Award”.  Thank’s for the nomination, Corey M.P.! I have only been blogging seriously now since December, and have had some pretty good success in building my platform this way.  I blog on several topics, mostly writing, but sometimes I have to sound off on several diverse

Back On the Horse, But Not At a Full Gallop

I’m out of the woods with the bronchitis, and it has given me a great load of time to think about what I’ll do once I get back to school and try to wrangle my students right before spring break is ticked off the calendar. I basically had a bronchitis break from school as I

Top Ten Favorite Books for This Writer

One writer to another, if you want to be a better writer, you must read good books.  I suppose you could read only books in your genre (which is recommended) but reading good authors to see what they do with the craft is quite mind-blowing and educational and will help in the long run to

Books I Want To Write

I have been writing off and on since the age of 15, but only seriously now for five years.  I have a list of books I want to write someday after finishing the adventure parody epic I’m writing right now.  For many of these I have outlines or have started them.  Here they are: 1.