book publishing Archives - The Write Word

Me wondering if my verbs would improve with looser shoes

For a while I’ve squinched up my face when I’ve been writing my blog posts. Not that they’ve tasted of rancid cheese, but that they haven’t felt fully satisfying. After letting that notion sit on my head for a month or two—I’m slow—I came up with it: it’s more the format that’s got a hitch in its giddyup, rather than the content. (I’m willing to have you argue the point that it’s the content that needs more caffeine.)

Rather than continue a monthly blog post that’s often an essay-style exploration of a single writing topic or writing concern native to me, I’m going to pen writing-related thoughts on a looser basis in the blog: shorter, possibly more personal, and at least a couple of times a month rather than monthly. I’m going to resume the monthly newsletter I suspended a while back and use that as the forum for longer posts.

In both, I’ll include links to my published pieces, which have been scant of late, but the curated links—which for a long while have dealt with maintaining mental balance and a broader perspective in pandemic times—will only be in the newsletter. I put some in here for old time’s sake, goopy sentimentalist am I.

In the main, the next few newsletter posts are going to deal with the past year and a half of writing a couple of books, and my current effort to set them up for self-publishing.

So, I would love for you to stick around here. Let me know if there are any topics (or tropics) you’d like explored—in a succinct, dazzling way, of course—in the blog.

And please join me on the newsletter list too. I am outlawing rancid cheese there as well.

Of course, if you’ve smelled old cheese in my posts for a while, you’re welcome to clean out the fridge by the way of the unsubscribe button. It’s been fun to have you—best success to your work and your subsequent cheese selections.

Links to Thinks

Chatting With the Bourbon Sasquatch
Me on a video chat with the Emperor of All Things Bourbon (AKA Steve Akley) on one of his many podcasts. I’m in my ’66 Airstream office, blathering about shoplifting, Las Vegas, and yes, whiskey.

Scientifically Speaking, Doing Nice Things for Others Could Help You Live Longer
“The beautiful thing about kindness is that it gets you outside of your own perception box, and it helps you to remove the focus from yourself and put it on other things in the world that help to provide meaning and purpose.”

5 Simple Principles That Will Help You Live Your Life On Purpose
“You don’t need to save the world by inventing an eco-friendly toilet that’s made of recycled microplastic and turns your poop into money for needy kids when you flush. Instead, it’s about making a difference, no matter how small.”

Positive Phrases for a Healthy Author Mindset
“And therein lies the premise of today’s post: using positive self-talk to improve your mindset and prospects as an author. Achieving this feat might seem unlikely now if you struggle with negative thoughts but, providing you have a healthy mental state in general, it’s possible. The key is learning how to identify and dispute your irrational thoughts. Turning the tide is a challenge but you can overcome it with a few key phrases.”

100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying
“17 – Don’t be weird about how to stack the dishwasher.”

Good souls: I’ve been working on the contents of the book pictured above for a while, and am finishing up the final edits. I’m going to self-publish it on Amazon in mid-to-late May. The book is about how to see the world as a writer and how to take that vision to the page. It has chapters on how to cultivate your writing voice, working in various writing genres, and looking at how writing works at the word, sentence (and even punctuation) level. (Oh, there’s funny stuff in there too—I couldn’t help it.)

There are also chapters on getting the writing blues (and how to paint them a different color), how to cope with writing distractions, and a resource section directing you to who and what I think are the brightest eyes in the writing world right now, from idea sparking to freelance contracting to self publishing. Writer’s Eyes will end up around 56,000 words. Many of them are juicy.

Get Your Hot Hands on the Pulsing Pages
If you’d like to get an advance digital copy of the book, write to me at bentguy@charter.net and specify whether you’d like a PDF, .ePub (Nook/iBooks) or .mobi (Kindle) version. What I ask is that you consider writing a review of the book and posting it on Amazon on the day I launch the book. Having a substantive number of reviews on launch day can be a big boost for a book’s early momentum, which can be a boost for its later momentum. (Right now there are multiple spots in the book that say “PHOTO?”—I’m still debating if I’m going to insert images.)

Of course you can say in your review you were given an advance copy of the book, and of course you can also say in your review something along the lines of what Dorothy Parker (who as a critic dubbed herself the Constant Reader) said on the use of “hummy” for “honey” in A.A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner:

“It is that word ‘hummy,’ my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.”

I always caution my readers to have a hankie at hand, should they frow up.

Let me know if you’d like to see the book; I’ll remind you when the day draws nigh when I’m going to launch this puppy on Amazon.