Michell Plested's Blog, page 49

Converted to the Rewrite

When I first became serious about writing I heard stories of people who spent huge amounts of time and effort to rewrite books from scratch. That never made sense to me. After all, you have already written something. Why would you want to write it again? The stories usually had some commentary about how the [...]

World Fantasy Convention 2012

Last week I attended the 2012 edition of the World Fantasy Convention in Toronto (well, actually Richmond Hill), Ontario. I have been to WFC in the past, most recently in San Diego last year. The difference this time was, I was attending the convention as a professional writer with a book and several published short [...]

Get Published Episode 96 – Marc Johnson & Remembrance

If you are listening to this on November 11th, chances are good that you have had some sort of a ceremony commemorating the end of World War 1. Here in Canada that takes the form of Remembrance Day. During the Tips and Typos section of the show, I spend a few moments commenting on what [...]

My Heart is Breaking

Tonight I decided to spend some time with my son. We sat and watched a movie together. That was nice and, perhaps is why what I’m about to say is so hard. You see, my co-editor for the anthology, “A Method to the Madness: A Guide to the Super Evil”, Jeff Hite and his lovely [...]

In My Corner

I talk a lot about trying to find time/make time to write. I don’t talk enough about what enables me to actually sit down and do my writing. That would be my family (and to a lesser, but equally important extent, my friends). When I have writing that needs to be done, my spouse and [...]

Get Published Episode 95 – A Method to the Madness: Anthology Update

I’ve been on the road a fair amount the past few weeks and I have learned that the tools you use are critical to your creative success. There are plenty of applications that will allow you to stay in touch with home and keep your writing and podcasting moving forward. Things like Dropbox, Google docs, [...]

A Wrench in the Works

This week I have the pleasure of traveling for work. Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy traveling on occasion. However, this was somewhat last minute and I came without most of my normal paraphanalia. No personal laptop is probably the biggest missing piece. Instead, I decided to try using Logmein on my iPad to keep [...]

I Thought it Would be Easier

I have discovered that not only am I still a newby at self-promotion, I’ve also been pretty naive. You see, I had this idea that, once my book was published, all I would have to do to get a signing or have the chance to do an author’s reading is call the library or book [...]

Get Published Episode 94 – Barbara Galler-Smith, Multi-faceted Writer

I often think that, to be a successful writer, you should have a good understanding of the writing craft from multiple angles. That means writing, reading, editing, marketing and promotion and even publishing. That’s the ideal, of course, and few of us have either the time or the connections to make that experience happen. On [...]

System Failure

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, you know I pride myself on never missing a post. That seems to have fallen by the wayside in the previous few months as I have missed my self-imposed Wednesday posting more than once (this week included). But, why is this happening? [...]