Rick Taubold's Blog, page 6

Ego and ignorance: The writer’s two worst enemies

From Rick: Lately, I’ve been doing occasional posts on what may sound like the seven deadly sins for writers. I did one called “Greed” (July 31, 2018) in which I talked about what can happen when writers get greedy, are overly protective of their work, and lapse into sheer stupidity that’s often based on ignorance […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Reflections on being a writer

From Rick: (Sorry for the late post this week) Over the years that Scott and I have been doing this blog, from the time of our first post on August 11, 2011, we’ve shared our thoughts about writing and publishing to help other writers out there, but we’ve not really taken the time to reflect […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Finding the right length for your story

From Rick: I just delivered a talk to a local writer’s group (www.LCRWriters.org) on story length and how to trim stories when you need to fit them into a certain word count. I’ve talked about several aspects of this topic here before, but some of it is new to the blog, so I decided it […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

News and updates on important topics for writers

(1) Bookstores, and Barnes & Noble in particular. In case you haven’t heard the news about B&N being up for sale, here’s Kris Rusch’s take on it and on bookstores in general and how they have applied to authors. Once again, I want to point out the widespread fallacy that having a publisher behind you […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Omniscient POV—PART 1 (What it is and what it isn’t)

From Rick: A lot of confusion exists among new writers regarding omniscient POV (called “omni-POV” hereafter). If you research the topic on the Internet, you’ll find a lot of agreement as to what it is, but you’ll also find differences of opinion, mainly from those who don’t truly understand it. You’ll also discover why it’s […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Getting your eBook noticed

From Scott: Some time ago, I did a blog where I documented my attempt at attracting new readers by advertising my books for free (via Amazon’s KDP program). For those who missed it, the idea is both simple and complicated. Put simply, the more times your eBook is downloaded, the better your chance of achieving […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Some thoughts on getting unstuck in your writing

From Rick: We’ve all heard the term “writer’s block” to mean being unable to write. It usually ranges from not being able to come up with any ideas at all to not being able to move forward on a particular piece. Some say that there is no such thing as writer’s block, but what is […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

POV choice and narrative voice

From Rick: For a while now I’ve been promising to write a series of posts about omniscient point of view. The reason I’ve delayed is that I simply haven’t had the time to write articles that will do justice to the topic. Although my time is still at a premium, it’s too important a topic […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Thoughts on KDP Print replacing CreateSpace

From Rick: I apologize for not having a blog post last week. Simple answer: too much to do, not enough time. I also will not have a post next week for the same reason (and because I’ll be out of town). I’m trying to catch up, even get ahead. Hopefully by year’s end I’ll be […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...

Dealing with story details and description—Part 1

From Rick: From time to time the question arises from writers about how much detail and description to add to a story and how and when to insert it. This important topic is going to take at least two posts to do it even minimal justice. When it comes to handling details and description in […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry...