Tenses are the way verbs change to show when something happened, either in the past (“She went…”), the present (“She’s going…”) or the future (“She will go…” etc.). Most verbs have two ‘aspects’: continuous (“He was writing a book…”) and simple (“He wrote a book.”), which show whether an action was completed. Obvious enough, but the beginning writer has a number of pitfalls to avoid. Continue reading “Getting It Right – Tenses for Dummies”
Tag: Writing
Book Description Epic Fail
One of the neat things about Indies Unlimited is that we get to become acquainted with the books of a whole lot of authors.
Not all those books make it onto the site. Sometimes this is because the subject matter is outside our wheelhouse. Other times, it is related to problems with the book. K.S. Brooks wrote a piece that covers a lot of the mistakes we see.
I don’t want to rehash her entire article, but I do want to focus on book descriptions. When I vet books, this is about as far as I ever have to go. Occasionally, I will read the preview of a book only because I can’t believe the book itself could possibly be as bad as the description. In many instances, the book is WAY better than the book description.
That’s too bad, because you really can’t expect a prospective buyer to take that extra step. Writing book descriptions is hard for authors. Kat wrote an article on how to write a book description. That article is chock full of good advice. Read it. Learn it. Live it.
I tend to organize information into categories. Here are a few of the error categories I have found in looking at book descriptions: Continue reading “Book Description Epic Fail”
There is no recipe for a secret sauce. Maybe.
Have you ever been in the middle of telling a story, just about to reach the climax, and everybody turned away and you weren’t able to finish. That happened to me a couple of weeks ago, except I was conducting a workshop via Skype and the power, literally went out.
One of the very cool things that happens when you achieve a little bit of success from self-publishing is that people think you have something to say. They think you have the ingredients to the secret sauce. In fact, after I passed along some advice to a fellow author a few months back, that’s exactly what she told me. She said, “You just gave me the ingredients to the secret sauce.” It reminds me of the book/movie “Fight Club”. “The first rule of Fight Club is-there is no Fight Club. That’s incorrect of course, because there was a Fight Club. Well, the first rule of self-publishing is that there is no recipe for the secret sauce. Maybe. Continue reading “There is no recipe for a secret sauce. Maybe.”
Value Fulfilment (or Lack Thereof)
The subject of writing a post (theme, content et cetera) has come up several times of late. When our own EM covered the subject (How to Write a Blog Post) I made the comment: “It doesn’t matter what blog, post/article I have to write I always leave it until the day before it’s due (waiting for inspiration) and then (panic stricken) write about the first thing that comes into my head.” I guess I’m one of the ‘seat of the pants’ kinda guys. The following post is no exception (Oh thrilling…).
I woke up this morning feeling good for some reason. It didn’t last long.
An unhappy child for various reasons, I cut my education short to join the army; not because I was keen to be a soldier, but because it meant getting away from my home environment. That decision led me on a whole other flight plan; after numerous career changes, with a modicum of success in each occupation, I was left feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied with my life. Writing was something I always did, to keep my head straight, and something to which I was always going to one day focus on totally, when I got everything else out of the way ( Hmmm yes…). Continue reading “Value Fulfilment (or Lack Thereof)”