Published on March 13, 2013
Our house in Maine has been for sale for almost a year now. We had a few bites early on, and a few in the fall, and then nothing. We have steadily dropped the price time and time again, and were finally contacted by a potential buyer last weekend. The price is so low now that we will walk away with nothing. But, that’s better than continuing to pay two house payments each month (as well as paying for double insurance and double taxes). The family that contacted us attended our yard sale before we moved. I remember the woman because, even though the house wasn’t for sale at the time, she asked if she could see the inside so I gave her a tour…
Published on March 13, 2013
The publishing world was all abuzz last week when Random House announced they were going to not only take rights (NOT just ebook rights!!) to authors’ books for four new ebook imprints, but they were also going to charge authors some up-front fees. After being raked over the coals online, they changed their terms but, in my opinion, they’re still not good enough…
Published on March 13, 2013
A lot of companies and service providers take rights from employees. There are so many positions I have turned down and devices that I do not use because I can pretty much lose everything, including things I might have written a long time ago…
Published on March 13, 2013
ghostwriting
Notoriety and cash in the bank are still possible regardless of being time pressured, lacking confidence or losing motivation to complete that novel…
Published on March 13, 2013
A magazine wants to buy an article I already had published elsewhere. They told me to quote them a price. How much should I charge?
Published on March 13, 2013
Like most writers, I love what I do. I love the creative process, the research, the meeting and dealing with various people. If I didn’t enjoy it so much, I’d do something else. Over the past decade or so I have been moderately successful in terms of my output and published material, having contributed both fiction and non-fiction to over forty publications worldwide. However, my problem was that I didn’t make enough money from writing to actually support myself. This led to me taking a succession of manual jobs I didn’t really like, which I endured just to enable myself to make ends meet. I was a factory worker, a barman, and later an English teacher in China. All the time I dreamed of being a professional writer. I looked at writing as more of a hobby. A hobby which, if I was lucky, sometimes allowed me the opportunity to supplement my income…
Published on March 6, 2013
Somebody should really write a book about things you may have forgotten to teach your kids along the way…
Published on March 6, 2013
After reading the entries for each contest, we can see how difficult it is to come up with a unique plot when working with an assigned topic. But, inevitably, a few writers do manage to successfully break away from the pack…
Published on March 6, 2013
Angela,
While proofreading my book “Notes Toward A New Rhetoric” before submitting it to BookLocker, I had my Mac read the entire book out loud to me.
I don’t know whether a PC can do the reading aloud. On a Mac, it can be turned on under System Preferences=>Speech=>Text to Speech. They give you a variety of voices to choose from. I like Bruce and Veronica.
Donald Stewart
NOTES TOWARD A NEW RHETORIC: 9 Essays for Teachers
Published on March 6, 2013
Writers dream of big things for themselves and their careers. When faced with rejection or roadblocks, however, some writers abandon their dreams. This doesn’t need to happen to you! If you want to make your dreams come true, you need to do what I did…
