I led my third Publishing 101 Boot Camp on Saturday, the second time it’s been offered during Lewiston Adult Education’s Super Saturday format. This six-hour time slot (which also included lunch for attendees) is the right amount of time to walk prospective publishers through the nuts and bolts of independent publishing. This followed closely on the heels of my fall writing class, Let’s Write That Book: 8 Weeks to Writing and Publishing Your First Book. Five of my writing students sat though Saturday’s workshop. Continue reading
Category Archives: Writing
Facing Our Fears
Turn counter-clockwise to off.
I’ve gotten in the habit of sending out an email on Wednesday morning to my writing students; it’s a recap from the previous night’s class, and it also offers encouragement for the coming week of pushing their book project forward. Here’s a bit of today’s. Continue reading
The 8-Week Book Project
I’m meeting a brand new group of writing students on Tuesday night. Many if not all of them are likely asking themselves three questions. Can I really write a book in eight weeks? Am I capable of writing one at all? Do I have what it takes to finally get that book of mine out of my head into narrative form?
The answer to all three of those opening questions is a hearty, “hell yes!” Continue reading
Forgotten Writers
When I first got serious about writing, I was especially interested in people and the geography that defines who they are. This was particularly germane to Maine, my home state, and the first book I ended up writing, about the history of town team baseball. Those small towns where baseball was played on warm July evenings, the lights rimming the diamond burning brightly somewhere in the middle of a small village, drew me back to the place and time, capturing the memories of the men who inhabited similar patches of grass and dirt across the Pine Tree State. Continue reading
A Consistent Body of Work
The beauty of a personal blog is just that; it’s personal. I posted recently about personal branding. This isn’t some cockamamie idea that I derived delusionally, while in the throes of dehydration at the end of some training brick, either. It’s supported by a host of thought leaders with the cred to back it up. Continue reading
Writing From Another Time
Norman Mailer was a literary icon whose influence as a writer spanned more than five decades following WWII. The decades where his writing wielded the most influence were arguably the 1960s, 1970s, and even into the 1980s.
Harvard educated, Mailer wrote fiction, nonfiction, essays, and even plays. He was one of the founding members of the The Village Voice. At times, especially early in his life, he was known as much for his machismo as he was for his politics and Pulitzers. Continue reading
I Don’t Have a PhD
I lost a training bid to teach technical writing to someone with a PhD.
I learned to write by writing. I’ve written something almost everyday for the past 10 years, have three books in print (and a fourth on the way), blog regularly, etc. My competition has a blog that hasn’t been updated in almost a year and has a total of six blog posts over the past two. As far as I know, their total book output is 0. Their online presence is pretty lame. Continue reading
Content for People Who Tweet
Last night, I had a drink with someone with a lot of tweets. He has lots of tweets he told me because he’s been tweeting for a long time and he got in while the tweeting was good. I got in after he did and I don’t have as many tweets, or people who follow my tweets. Continue reading
30 Minutes to Write
30 minutes in the library.
People are busy; I gather this because whenever I ask them how they are, they often say, “busy.” We live in busy times and there’s no way back from here.
Writing takes time, but what happens when you are so busy that you don’t have inordinate amounts of time to write, or even blog? Should you just throw up your hands and say, “I can’t do this?” Continue reading
Teaching writing
Words matter. They have the power to heal, convey love, hate, complexity, as well as whimsy. Some people are obsessed with words and how to arrange and order them—we’re called writers.
A decade ago, I gave myself permission to call myself a writer. This wasn’t an arbitrary decision. I based it upon things I was figuring out about myself at the time. Looking back, I made the right choice. Continue reading