Columns

Requests, Not Demands: How to Get Your Books into Libraries

August 7th, 2019

A few months back there was this author who, in trying to get his book stocked in libraries, acted like kind of a dunderhead and pissed off a lot of library people. He wrote a bit in Publishers Weekly about it, which opened like this:

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Beyond the Comfort Zone: Writing Outside Your Box

August 6th, 2019

Original photo by Chad Littlejohn In writing, as well as life, it can be easy to settle into a groove once you’ve found something that works. You might even get a little comfortable. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a lot less arduous to do good work when you’re not learning something new or worrying about a dozen other things. But once you set up camp in your comfort zone, it becomes much more tempting to stay there, careful not to wander too far.

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Stop Being Lazy and Write Different Types of Characters

August 5th, 2019

(Photo credit: Mahafsoun) Cackling cantankerous clichés, Batman! Not another evil witch… I’m Pagan. A Wiccanish weirdo who prefers my fires outside and my healing done with herbs, energy transference, and the occasional “potion.” I have yet to boil children in my cauldron. I don’t even find it necessary to own a traditional cauldron. Those things take forever to heat up.

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Ask Nick: Publishing 201 — Am I Spider Rico?

August 2nd, 2019

Hello, and welcome to Publishing 201—an occasional column in which I'll answer your questions about writing and publishing, so long as they haven't been asked and answered a million times already. There is plenty of 101-level advice out there, and thousands of writers who can repeat it, but very little has been written for writers further along in their careers or aesthetic development. If you have a 201-level question you'd like me to answer, reach out! Here's our very first question:

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Game of Thrones Was Born 23 Years Ago — Why The Books Will Forever Be Better Than the Show

August 1st, 2019

More than two months ago, Game of Thrones finished its 8-year run on HBO. It ended not with a bang but a whimper, according to almost anyone you’d care to ask: the hardcore Thronies on Reddit, the highbrow critics at the Los Angeles Review of Books, the disgruntled petitioners storming Change.Org demanding a rewrite of the final season.

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Building The Custom Notebook

July 31st, 2019

When it comes to matters of personal taste, notebook preferences are more particular than preferences regarding pizza (NYC v. Chicago, Pineapple V. People Who Are Objectively Correct), masturbatory habits, and which Quiet Riot song is the baddest-ass.

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Becoming a Reliable Shapeshifter: The Ever-Changing Nature of Brands

July 30th, 2019

Original photograph by Nandhu Kumar When teaching creative writing students about brand, the hardest part is convincing them that their brand is malleable. Your brand, which ties into your persona but has much more to do with the marketing side of things (i.e.: your genre, how you communicate on a professional level, the first thing people think about when they see your name, etc.), is entirely under your control.

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Storyville: How Travel Can Inform Your Writing

July 29th, 2019

You’ve all heard the saying, “Write what you know.” And in some ways, yes, I agree with it. If you have an expertise such as a certain job, skill, or trait, you definitely have the authority to talk about it. Or maybe you’ve seen something horrible or weird—a ghost, a violent car accident, or rare lunar event. Those things can certainly fall under the heading of “writing what you know.” But if we were limited to what we’ve seen and what we know, I think our fiction would be quite limited.

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Comic Conventions Versus Pop Culture Conventions

July 26th, 2019

My first comic convention was not amazing, spectacular, or any of the words that have come before “Spider-Man” in a comic title. There were no big celebrity guests. There were no medium-sized celebrity guests. You know what? Instead of naming all the kinds of guests that were not in attendance, I’ll just tell you there were no guests whatsoever other than Holiday Inn hotel guests who wandered into the basement convention space by mistake.

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Taking Creative Control: How to Make Time for Writing in a Busy Schedule

July 25th, 2019

Between time getting ready for work, commute time, and time at work itself, I spend close to 58 hours every week in some way dedicating myself to my job. Which is great! I’m paid to do it and because of that, I can pay for things like, you know, rent. And groceries. The electricity bill. Even eating out with friends when I feel like it.

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