Colin Garrow's Blog, page 82

Writer's Groups and Other Nightmares

Finding your own voice as a writer is a huge part of the process of developing your own style. One of the best ways to gauge how you're doing is to get feedback, and one of the best ways to get feedback is to join a group of writers.

Or at least, I used to think so. Until I met - The Brood.

Okay, they weren't really called The Brood and they weren't an actual threat to my existence, however,

How to Scare the Kids at Hallowe'en

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How to Write Like a Guitarist

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The Hardy Boys and Me

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How to Avoid Being a Famous Novelist

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How to Stay Clear of the Three C's

Maybe
it's because I'm getting older, or perhaps it's just that I don't have as much
patience these days, but when I decide to add a new book to my 'Want-To-Read'
list, it's because

The Book of Moron (Why Not Everyone Should Write From Experience)

There's an old idea that talks about everyone having at
least one book in them - the story of their own lives. So it follows that every
single one of us should be able to write at least one original story, right?



Nope. Nope. Nopedy nope.



Sure, it's fine to write about your own life if it's
actually interesting/useful/educational, but few of us are lucky enough to have
lives filled with the

Three Easy Steps to Not Finding Your Writer's Voice

Yes, you read that right - this is a post about not finding
your writer's voice. But first let's just clarify what I'm talking about.



Every writer has a voice. Sometimes it's exactly like their actual voice (the writing sounds the
same as the way they talk), but more often it's a sophisticated version of that
voice - interesting use of language, clever dialogue, original metaphors and so
on -

The Trick is to Keep Reading

I remember reading 'The Baader-Meinhof Complex' by Stefan
Aust and wishing I could somehow speed things up. Of course, I wanted to enjoy
every word and not miss anything, but the book was so damn heavy and unwieldy,
I sometimes felt like I was preparing for battle, instead of settling down for
a good read. It was two years before I finally finished it. Phew.

 

Which is one of the many reasons

Dipping a Toe in the Mighty Amazon

When I first started to look at putting my scribblings out
as eBooks, Amazon wasn't anywhere on my list of possibilities. However, having
had a chance to see how things work at Smashwords, I thought I'd conduct a
little experiment to see how the Amazonian experience differed.



KDP UnSelect

One of the reasons I'd been initially reluctant to go down
the Amazon route is their constant and