Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 108

Writer's Guilt

Still of Ralph Fiennes in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

You've all heard of Writers' Block, right?  That, unfortunately, is not the only affliction that we writers must endure.  There is also the infamous (or unfamous) Writer's Guilt.  Nobody talks about this one.  It is the Lord Voldemort of the publishing world:  that-which-cannot-be-named.

If you are a writer, you've felt it, even if you didn't know what to call it.  It's that feeling you get when you meet a friend (you haven't s...

Agent Joyce Holland on Show, don't tell

I just read Mike's blog from today, Sept. 14, where he said…  (You know I am not going to tell you the whole story because you'd know the ending and wouldn't buy my book! Hell, I wouldn't buy a book I knew the ending to before I'd read it.) I found his remark funny because I just had a discussion with a client who wrote a book with a vague ending. He said he did it because in the real world things never resolve smoothly, there are always loose ends. My reaction to that was short and fast...

Daring the Protagonist

 

                                                     (Photo courtesy of The Daily Sail)

Last week, Mike wrote a post on the subject of why he writes. To my great surprise, Mike claimed that his motivations have nothing to do with a longing for money or groupies. Clearly, he must be feeling the need to throw the IRS off his trail and shield his wife from the raucous realities of writers' conferences and book tours. But I don't want to create problems for Mike so I'll leave that discussion for ...

Editing is less frightening than rewriting, so edit more often . . .

By Michael Haskins

It seems that last week most everyone was concerned about rewriting. A necessary evil, I agree, but there are different ways to approach it. I haven't figured out how to avoid rewriting (other than being perfect and I leave that to those few who are) but I have, over the years, avoided what, I believe, Mike called a major rewrite.

I am a slow writer. On very good days, I do more than a thousand words, other days two hundred. I average in between those numbers. And then there ...

From Rags to Riches on the Kindle? Do you need a blog?

By Mike Jastrzebski

There is no right answer to this question. If you're going to start a blog and only post a couple of times a week it probably isn't going to do you a whole lot of good. If readers return to your blog several times and don't find new content they'll soon tire of the site.

I truly believe this site has helped my e-book sales. When I first thought about this blog I talked about it with my writers' group. I was just beginning to think about releasing The Storm Killer and Key...

The Writer's Toolbox

This week has been all about writing here at Write on the Water.   Mike discussed the pain of revision, Tom got into the wisdom of tracking one's drafts in order to measure and learn from those various revisions, and Mike came back with his musings on why we put ourselves through this agony and ecstasy.

Now that it's my turn at bat, I've decided to lay out several categories of software that I think are essential for the Writer's Toolbox.  While I will tell you what I use, in most cases, you c...

Why I write.

By Mike Jastrzebski

Having spent the last seven years cruising around the United States on our boat, I've met a lot of people. Many are curious about the cruising lifestyle, but just as many want to know about my writing once they find out that the reason I moved onto a boat is so that I could write.

It was my wife's idea to buy and live on a boat. It didn't take a lot of arm-twisting to convince me to go along with the idea, especially when she suggested I could write and work part-time while ...

From Minnesota to Mobile, Alabama by boat

By Mike Jastrzebski

No guest available to post today so I'm just throwing on some pictures of our trip down the river system from Minnesota.

 

 

 

Wait – This Version is Worse Than the Last One!

By Tom Tripp

Mike was just talking yesterday about his re-writing process and how critical it is to him. It got me thinking about a related issue we all face as writers — keeping track of drafts and revisions; and doing so in a way that helps us find the things we need without creating an organizational monster that must be fed constantly. 

The Dreaded Rewrite

By Mike Jastrzebski

It's Labor Day and I should be out playing. Instead, I'm sitting behind my desk working on the rewrite for the next book I'm going to release, Dog River Blues. It seems that I spend most of my life rewriting my books. I spent a year rewriting The Storm Killer before releasing it in July. And in fact, I rewrote the book three or maybe four times before I did the one year major rewrite.

I've already done several rewrites on Dog River Blues, but it's been sitting for a couple o...