Debbie Ridpath Ohi's Blog, page 196

Cartoon Caption Contest #4 Winner: Guy Thomas Wade

Congrats to Guy Thomas Wade of Cranking Plot for his winning entry!

CARTOON EMBED CODE:


(Before embedding, see my cartoon licensing info.)

 

Debra Broughton on persistence

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Inkygirl reader Debra Broughton posted the following in the comments section of a recent post:

“I read a column by the Grumpy Old Bookman in a UK mag called Writer’s News about the role of persistence and chance in getting published.

His point is that though there are some writers who succeed after years of rejection - there are likely many more who don’t succeed after many years.

On the other hand, the writers who find immediate success are extremely rare, so persistence is vital. And you never kn

500 Words A Day Challenge

In response to those of you asking for a 500 word challenge instead of a 1000 Words A Day Challenge, here you go:

Take the Inkygirl 500 Words A Day Challenge!

 

Writing Habits: Tom Robbins doesn’t outline, rewrites passages 40 times

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According to one of Tom’s friends, the author of Jitterbug Perfume rewrote passages up to 40 times:

When he was writing Jitterbug Perfume he’d read me passages out loud to see how it sounded, then go back and write it again. I’ve never met a writer who spent more time polishing his metaphors.

Sometimes Tom will spend an entire day perfecting ONE sentence.

When you read a Tom
Robbins book, you are experiencing the words not only
in the exact order that he wrote them but almost in
the exact order that h

Louis L’Amour: 200 rejections before first sale

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Louis L’Amour had 200 stories rejected before he finally made a sale. Now he has 300 million copies of his 123 books in print. All but one were published by Bantam.

From Irwyn Applebaum, president and publisher of the Bantam Dell Publishing Group:

One of the many extraordinary things about Louis L’Amour is that now, almost two decades after his death, he remains one of the most popular novelists and short-story writers in the country

Literary critics mostly ignored or disparaged him, but his widow

1000 Words A Day: Take the Challenge!

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Too often, I find that writers start motivational challenges like NaNoWriMo with enthusiasm and good intentions, but give up when they start missing their daily targets for more than a few days in a row…undermining their confidence and defeating the purpose of the original challenge.

I also wanted a challenge that lasted the whole year rather than just a month.

Hence, the 1000 Words A Day Challenge for writers. The goal is simple: to inspire writers to write.

Find out more about the Challenge and

E.F. Ortego on Rejections

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From E.F. Ortego:

The rejection is the initiation rite of an author. I was rejected four times before I finally got contracted. . . but each of those times I was rejected I simply went back to the drawing board and rewrote, endlessly read publishing material from editors like Debbie Dixon (Goal, Motivation, Conflict . . . which is the sole reason why I write today) so as to educate myself enough to know the thought process of an editor. I have learned through my experience that a rejection is onl

Jack King: 1000 words a day

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Suspense author Jack King likes to work at least 1000 words a day. He says that when the book hits the shelves, it works out to about 1 working day per page (A “380-page book takes about 380 days of writing, rewriting, corrections, etc.”).

He writes for about 2-3 hours a day, and this doesn’t include “mind resetting.”

I can’t just sink in to the chair and type, have to shake off whatever built up since last writing session: anger, laughter, whatever a day in a life brings. So, I just sit there in

Moxy Fruvous: My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors

 

Jasper Fforde: 76 rejections

British author Jasper Fforde collected 76 rejections before The Eyre Affair was published in 2001.

From this Australian interview:

But when you think about it it’s not that much. I’d been writing for 10 years, so 76 is only seven and a half a year, so I obviously wasn’t trying very hard. But those were official rejections, I suppose I had many more of my own personal rejections because I was constantly rewriting things but yeah I’ve still got them in a ring binder.

From an interview he did for Gre