Alexander M. Zoltai's Blog, page 192

Writing Advice, Even from Well-Known Authors, Can Be “Dangerous” . . .

The word “dangerous” has the root meaning “power to harm”, based on the Latin dominus, “lord”. How could advice from established authors “harm” a writer? Primarily, I feel, by being accepted as hard and fast “rules” or “laws”. For every “rule” in the books, some book of creative writing has successfully “broken” it :-) Plus, [...]

The Value of An Empty Mind

Yesterday was the only time I’ve published a post with a Title but no Body. I got comments! I almost didn’t post at all… I was reeling from an attack by what we call Griefers in the virtual world Second Life. I want to try to relate this to a Writer’s Life. I’d experienced these [...]

My Mind Is Empty

The Reader/Author Relationship ~ More Important Than Ever . . .

With self-publishing gaining ground as a Preferred mode of delivering the creative output of writers to readers, readers themselves are becoming the new gatekeepers in the Book World—replacing publishers as the Deciders of who reads what… For anyone who can’t quite see how readers could make informed decisions about book-value that could shape a book’s [...]

Publishing Wisdom From a Whippersnapper :-)

Just in case you’ve never heard the word “whippersnapper”, it means “a young and inexperienced person considered to be presumptuous or overconfident”. I found one through Twitter—Jolina Petersheim. Her status as a whippersnapper is her own judgement… Based on her personal definition, we have a few more of them in our Author Interviews and some [...]

Reading, Writing, Publishing ~ Poll Results

I started a poll back in April—a short but definitive poll—to find out what my visitors wanted to see on this blog. The results have been fairly steady as far as percentages go; and, even though the total number of respondents is still relatively low, some trends are clear: Art of Writing 26.2% Writing Craft [...]

Author Interview ~ james crawford

We’ve had two interviews here with Nova Sparks and Nova just happens to be the wife of james crawford ( yes, no capitals in his name :-) plus both Nova and james originally published on the same day! ~~~~~~~~~ james, tell us a little about yourself. I grew up in a small town north of [...]

Joel Friedlander ~ The Book Designer

Some blogs throw-off info in all directions yet still remain helpful or entertaining. Joel Friedlander’s blog is well-crafted and focused on helping folks build the best book possible. This post makes the 26th time I’ve referenced Joel on this blog —> click his name in the Top Tags widget in the left side-bar for the [...]

Why Writers Must Read In Order To Become Authors

A writer is someone who puts words down. An author is not necessarily a writer who’s gotten published… I know, lots of folks think authors are published writers but words do have meanings and “author” comes from ‘a person who invents or causes something’ which comes from Old French autor, from Latin auctor, from augere [...]

A Bouquet of Articles for Writers & Publishers

I use Google Alerts to help me find interesting articles I can cover on this blog—for Readers, Writers, and Publishers. After a few months of collecting possible articles, I usually end up with some that I just can’t wrangle into a full post’s coverage—still interesting but I fail at finding enough to say… Then, like [...]