Author: K.D. Rush

KD Rush is a South Carolina native currently working on several short stories and his debut novel, The Guild Inc., a supernatural thriller. He documents his writing journey at his blog, and here at Indies Unlimited in a monthly column called The Learning Curve. He also tweets daily at @KD_Rush.

The Top 10 Christmas Gift Ideas (for the writer in your life)

Welcome to The Learning Curve. This is where I chronicle my adventures as a new writer. The goal is to inspire you to put that bag of chips down, step away from the television, and tell the world a good story.

 

 

The Top 10 Christmas Gift Ideas (for the writer in your life)

My wife posed a simple question last month. It’s the same one I hear every year. “What would you like for Christmas?” I gave the standard reply and thought that was the end of the discussion. It wasn’t. She evidently doesn’t believe I have everything I could possibly want or need because she’s asked the same question almost every day since.

This is a technique that our teenagers taught her, and it’s quite effective in driving me nuts. She knows that one of my pet peeves is redundancy. More accurately, I don’t like to repeat myself. So after weeks of persistent pestering I promised to make her a list.

I finally sat down and came up with a list of things for her to choose from this past weekend. It occurred to me that many of these would be perfect for any writer. With that in mind, feel free to save this list and share it with friends and family for next year. Who knows? You might get lucky. Continue reading “The Top 10 Christmas Gift Ideas (for the writer in your life)”

Support Group for a Writer

Welcome to The Learning Curve. This is where I chronicle my adventures as a new writer. The goal is to inspire you to put that bag of chips down, step away from the television, and tell the world a good story.

Support Group for a Writer

Writing, for the most part, is a lonely job. There are very few of us who can afford to write full time without relying on some other form of income to keep the creditors at bay. Take our Indies Unlimited crew for example. Stephen Hise sells apples and homemade furniture by the side of the road. K.S. ‘Kat’ Brooks has a mobile dog washing service. Laurie Boris trains dolphins for a living, while Chris James, T.D. McKinnon, Carolyn Steele, and Yvonne Hertzberger all perform in a traveling circus to pay the bills. We do what we need to do in order to do what we want to do, which is write.

Continue reading “Support Group for a Writer”

Essentials for a Writer

Welcome to The Learning Curve. I am chronicling my journey as a new writer in hopes of inspiring you to put that bag of chips down, step away from the television, and tell the world a good story.

Essentials for a Writer

A writer has a toolbox that he or she works from. Those of you who have read On Writing by Stephen King or similar books on the subject will recognize the phrase. Our toolboxes contain the basics such as vocabulary and grammar. Eventually we will add style and voice to it, thereby customizing and making the toolbox our own. When we use the tools of our trade frequently, there’s little chance of them becoming rusty. Continue reading “Essentials for a Writer”

Can You Tell A Lie?

Welcome to The Learning Curve. I am chronicling my journey as a new writer in hopes of inspiring you to put that bag of chips down, step away from the television, and tell the world a good story.

Can You Tell A Lie?

In the documentary post I made a couple of months ago (A Writers Truth), I mentioned that telling a good story requires the skill of an experienced liar. Well, I may not have put it exactly like that, but close enough. Why do some books succeed while others sit on the shelves gathering dust, or in Amazon’s case lazy little electrons that refuse to budge? Who knows? Perhaps it was the cover, or the title. It could have been the blurb didn’t sound interesting enough. For whatever the reasons, these books just didn’t appeal to an audience. Art is subjective. More on that in a moment. Let’s talk about truth and lies for a bit. Continue reading “Can You Tell A Lie?”