JOANNA ELM, Author, Journalist, Attorney
The Pleasures and Perils Of A Writing Life
This was a great week: A recent blog of mine was included as a guest post on one of the great websites for authors, thebookdesigner.com (see below), and my British bestie, Julie, arrived for a visit so I took some time off from writing. We are both voracious readers, and we both love tennis, and we indulged in both activities this week. Continue reading “Eight Great Websites for Authors”
Straight off, let me be clear: writer’s funk is not writer’s block. The latter, “writer’s block” is the “condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with your writing.” Writer’s funk, on the other hand is the situation where you have churned out your target number of words, had no trouble at all– well, hardly any trouble — getting them down on paper and then you read them, and re-read them — and then you want to vomit, and throw it all in the trash. Continue reading “Writer’s Funk: What It Is — And Why It’s Good”
I just spent an hour on the phone with the man who, a couple of weeks ago, kept me up all night — turning the pages of his latest thriller. His name is J.D. Barker, and he’s an author who self-published his first novel, Forsaken, in 2014. Since then Forsaken, a supernatural thriller, has sold approximately 250,000 copies. As an audio book, Forsaken made $30,000 for J.D. in the first month of its release. After the book sold 13,000 copies in one week of 2015, it was scheduled for the New York Times bestseller lists — until the NYT discovered the novel was self-published. So far, Forsaken has earned between $250-300,000. Continue reading “How To Stand Out From The Crowd: An Indie Author’s Success Story”
Literary gossip has it that William Faulkner chopped off the bottom of his study door and had all his meals passed to him under the door when he was writing; poet and playwright, Edna Vincent Millay wrote in a cottage on her property, and hung a white flag out of the window to get her husband’s attention whenever she needed something. Continue reading “How To Stick To A Writing Routine When You’re NOT A Famous Author”
I’m going Behind the Scenes again with Part Two of my report on the Writers Boot Camp for which I signed up as part of my “epic” effort to produce a third thriller. Last week I explained Why I Signed Up. Today: I Look at Whether I Benefitted from the Exercise? Continue reading “Writers Boot Camp: Was It Worth It?”