Should You Join an Association for Writers?

mermaid-4340834_640 pixabay.comIf you’ve been writing for any length of time, you’ve likely seen enticements to join a writers’ association. But if you’re new to the game, or skeptical of groups that want you to pay to join, you may not have given much thought to them. Today, I thought we’d take a look at what associations do and how you can evaluate whether to join.

The basics of membership organizations. Associations and other membership organizations tend to provide information, education, and services around a topic. They exist for most fields – from mermaid swimmers to fundraisers. In the writing spaces, they tend to exist for genres ( Romance Writers of America, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators), regions (Maryland Writers Association, Pacific Northwest Writers Association), or sometimes both (Virginia Romance Writers Association). Writing Continue reading “Should You Join an Association for Writers?”

Authors Want to Know: What Is a Chapter?

the chapter size and length train by gordon longWhen the minions sit around the gruel pot chewing the crunchy bits, sometimes we get going on the esoterica of writing, subjects like, “How long is a chapter?” is it all right to use ‘alright’?” Or, more appropriate, given the food intake in this joint, “How do you spell ‘diorhhea’ ‘dihorhea’ ‘diorhea’… ‘the trots?”

When it comes to the length of a chapter, I think that’s a bit of a red herring. It’s not how long the chapter is; it’s what the chapter is there for. We break our writing into sentences, clauses and phrases for specific reasons, usually to do with conveying meaning. Likewise, we break novels into chapters.

Why? Continue reading “Authors Want to Know: What Is a Chapter?”

Eight Years and Still Going…

Eight years ago, the Evil Mastermind launched Indies Unlimited. Since then, we’ve had well over 2.7 MILLION page views, been named as one of Six Great Blogs for Indie Authors in Publishers Weekly, and ranked as one of the top writing-related sites by Alexa.

If you want to see what other people are saying about us, you can check out our “What Others Are Saying” page here. Yeah, not super original, but hey… it gets the point across. We haven’t updated it in a while. Someone needs to get on the admin to do that.

Since our early days, we have evolved greatly, but never lost sight of providing free, high-quality content for all types of writers and readers.  We’re proud that readers and authors alike trust our content, and we’re grateful to all of you for spreading the word about us.

Indies Unlimited is run by volunteers. Kudos to all the minions past and present for donating their time and energy to provide excellent articles, advice, and tutorials for our audience.

Here at IU, we do our best to publish one article every day, but due to time and financial restraints, sometimes that’s not possible and we miss a day or two. We try to avoid that and will continue to provide helpful content as those things allow. Thanks for your patience with that.

So here’s a pile of thank yous for making Indies Unlimited a success and a community. It could not be one without the other. We look forward to another year filled with great things for all.thank you writers banner-1186625_640

Author Eats Crow – Never Say Never

raven on a tree branch courtesy of pixabayWay back in 2014, I wrote an article here on Indies Unlimited about how I would (almost) NEVER write a sequel or a series. I ranted quite a bit about inspiration vs. conscious, mechanical design of a plot, and I named names. As you might imagine, I got both positive and negative comments on that post, as I fully expected.

So here I sit, five years later, and I’m writing Book #22 of my paranormal mystery series!

What changed? Nothing.  Everything. I have no idea. Continue reading “Author Eats Crow – Never Say Never”