Traditional Publishing’s Attitude Toward Authors

Another quote from a supporter of traditional publishing: they refer to “the paid affiliates of C[reate]S[pace], iUniverse etc…who prey upon the uninformed, delusional, first-time author”
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Stop Stopping Yourself with Premature Edits (Guest Post by Rosanne Bane)

Trying to edit while drafting is like trying to polish your shoes while walking. Actually, it’s more like trying to polish your shoes while trailblazing over rough and unmapped territory. It takes longer to get where you’re going, you can’t possibly get a good shine and you’re almost guaranteed to lose your balance and fall.

“Short Cuts Make Long Delays” – J.R. Tolkien

Your brain stem and limbic system can do more than one thing at a time, which is why you can walk and chew gum and still notice cars in the crosswalk. But your cortex, your creative brain, simply cannot multitask.

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In Praise of Robert McKee’s “Story”

In the past few years I have started, but not finished:

1. A coming of age story with a strong musical element
2. The first mystery in a new series with a rather artistic protagonist
3. The first mystery in a new series with a female protagonist
4. A Jeeves & Wooster/P. G. Wodehouse-inspired light comedy with a mysterious twist.

They are unfinished, not because they aren’t good, but because I didn’t know how to make the last 1/3 (or 1/2 or 2/3) as good as what was already written.

Not because I don’t know how to use words. Never been a problem. I was reading at college level when I started Kindergarten back in the Jurassic Era.

What I didn’t know was, once you start building a bridge of story from over here and it spans half the chasm, how do you keep it from collapsing into the ravine until you can make it land over there?

In other words, what is the structure of a story?

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