David Bain, author of GRAY LAKE, DEATH SIGHT and several short story collections, offers ten essays on writing, with an eye toward helping new writers gain their footing and keeping the more seasoned scribe motivated. It also includes his essay "Basic E-Book Self-Publishing Advice for Newbies" which has already helped hundreds of beginning indie authors.

A longtime college English prof and former newspaper bureau chief, Bain infuses these essays on the writing life with years of teaching, editing, and indie publishing experience, using an easygoing yet incisive style.

Also included are insights into Bain's own work, background into his fictional characters and settings, and two interviews with fellow authors working in the dark fantasy genre.

The table of contents include:

Introduction by David Bain

ESSAYS ON WRITING
Time and the Non Full-Time Writer
The One Surefire Way to Beat Writer's Block
Basic E-Book Self-Publishing Advice for Newbies
On Revision: Love, Hate, and Saying "Good Enough"
The Writing Life Begins at 44
Writing: Art, Business & Jimi
When "Real Life" Encroaches on Writing Time
Your Assignment: To Be Truly Alive
On Genre, Music and Limitations
Don't Worry about Word Count - "The Bathroom Break Method"

ESSAYS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT MY OWN WORK
Why I Give So Many Stories Away for Free
Morbo the Clown Comes to Town: Audience vs. Art
How the Will Castleton Stories Got Started...
INTERVIEWS
Interview with C. Dennis Moore: "On Reviewing"
Interview with Michael K. Rose

From the introduction:

A few caveats on this little book. It is exactly what the title says: Ten Short Essays on Writing.
Well, actually, there are a few extras - a couple essays about my own work and a couple interviews with writer friends who you should check out.
The caveats:
1. It's a short book, about 11,000 words. The print version is just over 130 pages.
2. In the course of talking about writing, I sometimes discuss my own work and provide links to places you can buy it. It's what midlist writers do - call that caveat #2.5: I haven't written dozens of bestsellers, but I have several novels under my belt under my own name and others and have had more than 100 stories and poems accepted by editors in the professional world, despite the fact that I mostly self-publish these days. I've also taught writing at the college level for... well, let's just say for significantly more than a decade...
3. These essays used to appear for free on my blog if you want to dig around for them, but people seem happy enough to pay the nominal fee to have my humble advice collected in an easily digestible volume.
4. No book on writing can truly change your writing life. Butt in chair in front of keyboard is the only way to change your writing life. Books like this can, however, inspire you, point you in a direction, give you a boost on the days you don't want to write. And that's all I'm really hoping to do with this little collection. There are many, many days when I don't wanna, don't think I can, don't have the time, and I need to read (or write) something like the first essay to kick myself into gear...

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• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 42 Pages
• File Size: 1,729 KB