Writer beware, indeed! Since I’ve been blogging, I’ve read countless posts warning writers about Author Solutions. It appears that the Penguin-Random House has enabled AS to extend its evil tentacles toward even more unwitting writers. Their activities sound so much like “white collar crime,” I wonder how they get away with it. Then I realize, it is “white collar crime” and that is how they get away with it.
Author: Marie A Bailey
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Round 3. Formidable poets, but you can only vote for one.
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Here’s me as a model! (Don’t worry. I’ll keep my day job.) Love the T-shirt and being a winner :)
Readers, meet Marie Bailey, who won the recent Yesterday Road T-shirt giveaway. Marie was kind enough not only to don the shirt rather than slipping it into a local Goodwill bin, but also to provide this photo of her actually wearing it.
Drop by and read Marie’s engaging blog, 1WriteWay. She is always thoughtful and sincere as she describes her writing life, and she’s probably the most generous re-blogger out there.
Thanks, Marie!
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Here is the second installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not To Do by Marie Ann Bailey of 1WriteWay at http://1writeway.com and John W. Howell of Fiction Favorites at http://johnwhowell.com. These lists are simu-published on our blogs each Monday. We hope you enjoy.
Downloaded from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=cats&ex=1#ai:MP900262236|mt:2| For your first job interview:
10. Do not bring your cat. For one, the interviewer may be allergic to cats. For another, the cat may take that opportunity to gift a massive hairball on the interviewer’s desk.
9. Do not go on a bender the night before. The interviewer may not take kindly to you smelling like a vat of fermenting wine or worse adding a hairball of your own making to the desk.
8. Do not choose this as an opportunity to express your inner punk by sporting a blue Mohawk hair style. With your luck, the interviewer will likely be a former Marine who will want to shave off that blue hair personally with a dull jungle knife.
7. Do not show up wearing your gardening clothes. This may confuse the interviewer as to whether you’re there for the interview or you’re just one of the landscape crew.
6. Do not offer as one of your weaknesses that you are a procrastinator, even if it is true. In response, the interviewer may procrastinate about whether to tell you that you don’t have the job.
5. Do not take the opportunity to go through the interviewer’s desk if you are left alone during the interview. Chances are the interviewer will be back before you know it and accuse you of stealing the change kept hidden in the bottom drawer.
4. Do not tweet during the interview. While you may think tweeting is evidence that you are “hip” to social media, the interviewer may tweet later that you are a social idiot.
3. Do not complain about your ex-spouse or ex-lover or ex-anything during the interview. Such disclosures will only make the interviewer wonder what you will be like as an ex-employee.
2. Do not come to the interview and say “I’ve applied for so many jobs. Which one is this?” Chances are the interviewer will counter with “I’ve had so many job applicants. Who the hell are you?”
1. Do not hug the interviewer at any time before, during or after the interview. At best, the interviewer will simply turn red-faced and throw your resume into the “Do Not Call Back” pile. At worst, the interviewer will sue you for sexual harassment.
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A brave poem by a beautiful warrior about a great loss, a young poet named Shane.
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A short story by moi on The Community Storyboard (and my 10th post there)!
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The Storm & the Darkness now available on Amazon and Kobo! Get your copy now!
The Storm and the Darkness, the second book in The House of Crimson and Clover Series, is now available!
Purchase on Itunes- Coming Soon!
Add to your Goodreads TBR List*
*Running a giveaway for a free signed copy!
Ana Deschanel has made a terrible mistake. The only chance of protecting the other people involved is to flee New Orleans, the only home she has ever known, for the quiet solitude of Summer Island.Summer Island, Maine (population 202) is not the tranquil escape Ana imagined. The locals are distant and cold, especially her neighbor, the reclusive veterinarian Jonathan St. Andrews. Her only lifeline is the kind but odd caretaker Alex Whitman. Showing up at all the right moments, he warns her she is completely unprepared for a Maine winter. As the first winter storm approaches to whispers of an island shutdown-…
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Interesting article on Ray Bradbury by Interesting Literature.
‘I heard this typing. I went down in the basement of the UCLA library and by God there was a room with 12 typewriters in it that you could rent for 10 cents a half-hour. And there were eight or nine students in there working away like crazy.’
This was Ray Bradbury, speaking about the genesis of his most famous novel, Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. According to the writer himself, he went to the bank and got a heap of change in dimes. Then he went to the basement and started to put dimes into one of the typewriters, topping it up every half-hour. Nine days later, he’d written a short story, ‘The Fireman’, which would develop into Fahrenheit 451. And the rest, as they clichaically say, is history: the novel has been studied and analysed – and, most importantly of all, especially given its subject-matter, readView original post 1,002 more words
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My attempt to fill Katie’s shoes while she’s on hiatus from blogging :)
While A is away, the blog still gets to play. Please welcome Marie Ann Bailey, from 1WriteWay.
Brittany woke to the sharp odor of damp soil and something else, something familiar, something sweet. She tried to stretch out her legs. Her feet touched a solid barrier before her legs were fully straight. She was lying on her right side, in a fetal position. She tried to lift up but, again, she met with a barrier. She opened her eyes wide but it was dark all around her. Her throat tightened and she felt a rising hot bubble of panic coming up from her stomach. She was in a box of some kind. Soil beneath her, wood on the sides and above her. She stretched out her hands and felt around the small, close space. The smell of the soil and the “something else” was adding to her panic. She…
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This morning I had the good fortune to come across this post from Dave at According to Dave. He shares a post from a NaNoWriMo forum. You can read the original post at http://nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reaching-50-000/threads/114149, or go to Dave’s blog for the full text. In short, the post is about a fear that many writers have: the fear of being thought ridiculous. Not unskilled, not inexperienced, but ridiculous as in your writing can be “laughed at, scorned, lampooned.”
I’m currently participating in Camp NaNoWriMo and am going through the usual “this novel is s**t” roadblock. And I recognize the fear that the poster writes about, the fear that makes me question every page, every paragraph, every word I type. I know I’ve written about this in other posts of mine and in comments about writing workshops and the like, but apparently it’s not a dead subject for me.
In a college-level workshop that I took about 20 years ago, one of my stories–the ending, specifically–was laughed at, mocked. The mocking was led by the professor and I assume since he was known for getting young writers hooked up with agents and publishers, some students took his cue to impress him. At least one student saw the devastation and humiliation writ large on my face and tried to comfort me later. I’ll admit the ending was melodramatic and the story had a lot of problems overall. But I’m not convinced it was necessary to humiliate me.
Ironically, my final story for that semester was one that the professor crowed about, to the point of introducing me to someone important (an agent, maybe? a publisher?) at a writing conference. If he was offering me an opportunity at that point, I missed it because I couldn’t reconcile his willingness to humiliate with his willingness to praise one and the same writer. I remember standing in the room, between him and this important person, and being dumbstruck because I hadn’t anticipated his praise. I had no 3-minute elevator pitch. I had nothing. I just smiled at him. I might have said thank you. They walked away. The important person was obviously unimpressed.
Although the wound still aches and I still fight the fear of being found unworthy, of being found a figure for ridicule, I also now feel unimpressed by the professor and his connections. I realize that some of the dynamic in that workshop, in that whole writing program, was based largely on his influence, his power to anoint the next “golden boy” or “golden girl” writer. It wasn’t to guide us into becoming better writers, but for him to find the diamonds in the rough and nurture them. Like many in academia, professors seek out those students who make them look good.
Fortunately this professor was not my only access to guidance. And I did learn a lot in his workshop, technically speaking. It’s a sorry state to be past my mid-fifties and still coming to a near froth over that experience. But it’s time to move on, to write my “ridiculous” novel, if that is what it is, to take a cue from a young woman who, although still afraid, “cannot shut [her] mouth from shouting the music that has swelled in [her] lungs.”
Marie at 1 Write Way 