C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

06/01/2010 • 7:02 PM 0

Publishing Marketability Conundrum

It just occurred to me that I’d be much more successful as a writer if I was more likeable, more stress-resistant, less angry, less paranoid and 26% sexier. Publishers want marketability. From now on, I’m not wearing a slip.

Alternative: forget all of the above and just be less lazy. However, without brain transplant technology, what’s a slacker to do?

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

Sorry. Lost it in a Shatnerian way.

Go be prolific.

Filed under: Publicity & Promotion, publishing, writing tips, book, promotion, publicity, writing

06/01/2010 • 6:56 PM 0

Ouch, baby. Very ouch.

Once you’ve entered the world of writing you have two annoying choices. Either you write and have the fear of failure dog you, or you don’t work on your opus and are doomed to regret what might have been. The good thing about getting started with writing–instead of carrying around a bag of stinking regret–is the fear melts away with each word.

I can putter with so many distractions, or I can dive into the inevitable and write immediately. Rip off that Band-Aid and get to work. Don’t have rituals (well…okay maybe coffee is necessary.) Otherwise pre-writing rituals slow you down. Just go.

How many books have been written and published since you vowed to get something on a bookstore shelf?

Filed under: publishing, writing tips, start writing

05/30/2010 • 7:04 PM 0

The Publishing Process

Great. Um…what’s a typewriter?

Filed under: publishing, publishing, publishing process

05/28/2010 • 8:33 PM 0

Word to Your Mother

Horror writers may benefit from the weirdness of this word…

Mastomenia

meaning

(brace yourself)

menstruation through the nipples.

(Or…next week on House.)

And speaking of House, here’s another thought to stir your neocortex. If you were in a TV show, are you comic relief, the star, co-star or (heaven forfend) an extra? House is obviously the star of House, but it’s more than just the name on the door. He’s the brilliant, crazy alpha.

Sure, we’re all stars of our own movies, but look around. Is this what being a star really looks like. Are you really the center of the plot or are things happening around you? Are you making stuff happen? Do things happen to you instead of you initiating the action? What role are you playing in your life? Is somebody else getting all the good lines? Is somebody else getting all the action?

If so, you need to stop reading this blog, fire your writer and get a new one. I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in heroes, and anyone can be a hero. All we’ve got is each other, so we need heroes. We need stars. We don’t need more underpaid extras following orders in the background and pretending they have conversations and lives and purpose.

What are you? Decide what you are. Then go be that, dammit.

This is the most inspiration you’ll ever find in what I write…but I really had to make up for laying mastomenia on you.

Filed under: Uncategorized

05/28/2010 • 8:21 PM 0

Guide to Literary Agents

Here’s a great blog on those agent people:

www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog

Getting an agent is tough and if you’re a pessimist, you’re probably not writing for publication.

Accept that writers are generally screwed.

Now get back to writing.

Good news:

No matter how bad it is, there will still be new books published next year.

Bad news:

They’re all gonna be diet books by Tom Arnold and YA by Jay Leno.

Filed under: agents, publishing, agents, guide to literary agents

05/28/2010 • 8:05 PM 0

What can you leave out?

In a recent short story I wrote a bag lady asks a city social worker, “You trying to convert me to Buddha, Jesus, Allah or L. Ron Hubbard?”

My first reader went over the story and rightly pointed out what I’d missed in subsequent drafts. There was something more to omit. I was treating readers like idiots and spoon-feeding them. The quote in the final draft was the same, but I cut one word: “Hubbard.”

Scientology is plenty well-known thanks to Tom Cruise. There’s no need to hit the reader over the head. The tendency to over-explain betrays a lack of confidence in the writer-reader connection.

I won’t explicate further.

Filed under: rules of writing, editing

05/27/2010 • 6:48 PM 0

About Editing

Recently I sent someone a piece of poetry. They liked it, then rewrote it (WTF?!) and then decided they’d edited it down too much and robbed it of its power. Ultimately they pretty much said “Eeeeh, stet it.”

A while back a friend of mine was an editor in educational publishing. She showed me some of her work and I was appalled. Yes, much of educational publishing is homogenized into a single tone but it was as if she made it her mission to water it down, make it worse and rewrite everything. In truth, I thought she was a terrible editor (too quick to cut) but she was a worse re-writer. Perhaps she was an editor who was a frustrated writer (the most dangerous kind.)

With my magazine work I’m very happy with my editors. They always preserve my voice and whatever they do seems reasonable (although I don’t care what The Chicago Manual of Style says, capitalizing Internet still looks dumb to me.) Mostly, I have a hard time finding their changes, so of course I think they’re brilliant editors.

When do you decide someone has crossed the line from critical (and helpful) to hypercritical and destructive? I’d be curious to hear your experiences.

Filed under: publishing, bad editing, editing

05/27/2010 • 11:55 AM 0

Writers: The Manifesto of Enough

The world is full of injustices and actions that make me rant and rave and curse. But things aren’t so bad today because I am focused on the things I can control. Others do not have the freedom to write. I do, so I should exercise that right to express myself and enjoy it, as others would if they had the opportunity. Others suffer, which I lament and protest, but they suffer no less when I fail to write.

I have found the joy in writing and so finally I am writing copiously without straining and etching it out slowly with all the recrimination and self-loathing procrastination injects into the brain and marrow.

I was deceived and I deceived myself.

I thought it should come hard to be valuable, but writing is finally play. I must be incredibly stupid because I’ve written for so long, for a living, for myself, for others…and now I’ve finally got it. How did I fail to notice?

New thought (to me):

To be valuable, on some level, writing has to be fun,

in execution and in reception.

I have experienced thrills and joys, but all with a wary and unwavering eye to how little time was left to enjoy them, how fleeting my smiles, how soon forgotten the awards, how soon spent the rewards.

Today I’m not doing that.

I write. I edit.

I have never been happier.