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New courses in Crime Novel and Short Story writing and also in Novel Writing.
Steve fails at ball.
The Media is NOT the message.
RANT-'o-THE-WEEK:
Check out our newest course, listed below. We seem to be picking up steam, adding more courses. The school has always fluctuated between fifty and sixty courses, since shortly after our start back in 1998. I used to claim we were the oldest and largest online writing school. Might still be true but I don't know. Who cares? It's more important that we try to do a good job and deliver good advice at a low price.
Speaking of old and large, I have taken to going to a gym and working out. So what, I hear you say, what's this got to do with writing? Well, a lot. If I were a bricklayer's hod-carrier, I wouldn't need to do this. But I sit on my butt 10 hours a day and of late it shows. The strongest muscle in my body is my mouse-thumb. It can happen to you too. Writing is about as sedentary a job as you can think of. So now, at the local Gold's Gym I am the only blob in the house. Other people all look like Arnold Schwarzneggar—and that's just the women. In three weeks I have never seen anyone as fat and out-of-shape as I am. I sort of resemble the German zepplin Hindenberg. In fact, maybe I resemble the original, General Paul von Hindenberg—but without the cute hat, medals, moustache and boots.
Love the hat. I want one. Keep the sea gulls off my head.
I hired on Neil, a personal trainer, for a month as an experiment. I believe Neil formerly worked for the Spanish Inquisition. So whereas before I came away feeling that I had been beaten by some street gang, I now pay to feel beaten by some street gang. And if I fail to show up for one of my several-times-per-week beatings, I have to pay Neil anyway. This, I am told, is an incentive.
The gym has a bar where one can buy drinks made of roots and twigs. All the drinks look brown and taste disgusting. I asked the girl behind the counter if I could buy a six-pack of abs. I'd heard of them, i told her, and if she had some in the 'fridge, I'd take some. She looked at me as if I were insane, but, then, I'm accustomed to that.
About the only machine I was really good at was treadmill. These are fancy, with buttons, panels and a TV to watch. OK, when I first got on, the instruction panel lit up with "One at a time, please" and with no earphones to plug into the thing the TV is silent, but I can walk OK. I don't watch the TV; I stare out the window at the parking lot, daydreaming of freedom. Yesterday Neil's voice interupted my reverie with "Three Stooges? You're wathcing the Three Stooges?"
I looked down. There were Larry, Curly and Moe, poking one another's eyeballs. "I guess so," I said. "Before your time, I bet. What was the name of the fourth Stooge?"
Neil didn't know. I bet you don't know either. Email me if you do. As he walked away I shouted after Neil, "OK. This one's easier for you. What was the name of the fifth Beatle?"
He spun around instantly and shouted back the correct answer. But, in fact, there were, at various times, six Beatles. Extra credit to anyone writing me with the names. Don't look it up; you know or you don't.
But the nadir was when I failed 'ball'. We went into a room with padded floor (and I soon found out why) and there was some 75-pound woman on one side practically doing ballet pirouettes on a large gray ball. Neil picked up another large gray ball. I said, "No way." He said "Way" and instructed me. I fell off the ball every way it was possible to fall off the ball, and that was a lot of ways (we're talking a sphere here, if you recall your solid geometry from school). Finally he gave up on me for the day and turned to his appointment book.
But here I ran into an all-too-common issue for full-time freelance writers the world over. Other people don't think you have a job. I had to sit Neil down and explain to him that I work 40 hours a week and he can't just schedule me in to the gym when he feels like it.
"But you can make your own schedule," he said.
"Not entirely. I have clients who expect things to happen on a daily basis and expect me to be on the job at the other end of the telephone or computer IM when they need me. Oh, and by the way, I'd rather be sitting at my desk next to that phone and not lying in bed moaning in pain from sore muscles, so let's cut back on the enthusiasm here."
I'll get there. It will take longer than Neil expects. If I had known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
Beginning in the mid-1800s with Edgar Allen Poe’s dark tales, mysteries have increased in popularity over the years; today they’re one of the hottest markets in the fiction genre.
Learn the basics of writing feature articles for newspapers. Learn what features articles are (or aren't), how to get ideas for them, what makes a good feature, interviewing tips, and the anatomy of a feature.
The best kept secret to marketing nonfiction books is that you don’t have to write the entire book. In this course, you will learn about all of the elements that need to be included in a book proposal and how to put them together for maximum effect on the agent and/or editor, setting you on the path to signing a contract with a publisher.
Some sage once said that everyone has a novel inside them. We all know that, but the problem is in getting it out, down on paper via the friendly computer, and then accepted by a publisher.
SCHOOL
NEWS: TWO new courses! Do you love Miss Marple? Spenser? Kinsey Milhone? Then you need to write a mystery yourself! And we can get you started. John Paxton Sheriff's course on Crime Novels and Short Stories is the place to go. Check it out today!
And John Paxton Sheriff is also now teaching (for us, he's taught the course for years elsewhere) Novel Writing. Some sage once said that everyone has a novel inside them. We all know that, but the problem is in getting it out, down on paper via the friendly computer, and then accepted by a publisher.
WHO's
DOING WHAT: WritersCollege.com Chief Factotum and dishwasher Stephen Morrill (c'est moi!)has now completed two fantasy novels, both of which need serious rewriting before he can try to sell them. But he has created a web site and blog to start generating buzz. The web site is LetheChronicles.com and has samples from the book. Go look, he needs to see if the web-site counter is working.
Someone waylaid me at a party last week. Asked me the usual two questions
designed to assign me a place on society's pecking order: who are you
and what do you do? I don't respond well to the latter question because
I have learned that telling people I'm a writer only stimulates more questions
and I'm not much interested in the conversation and they're standing between
me and the shrimp cocktail platter. In fact, these days I often I tell
people that I'm retired, which seems to be sufficient to place me, if
not above or below them in the social strata, at least off to one side
and irrelevant.
But I admitted to the low status of being a writer. This means I then
have to explain WHAT I write. I have a set patter: Did magazines and wire
service news articles. Did corporate stuff. Still do a little now and
then. Run a school for writers on the internet. That latter usually gets
the conversation into an area I love to talk about, and away I go.
But if you write nonfiction, and especially news, you sometimes get the
other question. The dreaded Media one. As I reached around my interrogator
to grab a fistful of shrimp, he asked it: "So what do you think about
The Media?"
The Media. The implication is that The Media is one monolithic Great Satan
of Scandal bent upon deceiving us about the Liberal Agenda. Now, I know
you are saying, "Whoa! Steve's overreacting. He's gone off his lithium."
No, I'm not. The questioner almost always thinks The Media is liberal-controlled
and lying to him. This one was typical and he started in on the liberal
thing while I was still thinking of an answer that would satisfy him.
Here's the answer I would like to give but never have time for: There
is no Media. Lumping news dispensers as diverse as Foreign Affairs magazine and Penthouse, The New York Times and The National
Enquirer, as diverse as Christianne Amanpour and Howard Stern, is impossible.
Might as well have asked, "So what do you think about mass production?"
Kind of depends upon the item being produced and who's doing it and why.
Nor is The Media something imposed upon us. We buy it, folks, and they
sell us what we have told them we want to buy. No newspaper survives for
long when the customers stop putting their quarters into the slots. No
magazine lasts long by advertising products the readers do not buy. No
book publisher produces books it thinks will not sell. Even Howard Stern
has to take a break every few minutes to push soap and, if he were to
offend his core audience, the soap makers would withdraw support. It's
a business and it's profit-oriented.
The Liberal Agenda part of the question is simple demographics. Actually,
most media outlets are owned by conservative corporations and operated
by older, wealthier, conservative publishers. But the reporters researching
and writing the stories tend to be just out of school, idealistic still,
and paid slave wages. Oh, and they all want to get a Pulitzer for last
Friday's writeup of the school board meeting, so they get carried away
at times. Nevertheless, both young reporter and aged publisher usually
try to do a good job of delivering unbiased news. They do not always succeed and there are some glaring exceptions to the general rule.
But people who own media outlets have this odd notion that they should
be allowed to control what they produce. And, yes, they sometimes impose
a subtle slant on the news they deliver. But any slant imposed from above
would likely be conservative. The reporters get in their liberal licks
only because publishers are laissez-faire about what gets printed or told
on a day-to-day basis.
There is no Media. There are hundreds of thousands of mediums. And they're
all different, different in audience, advertisers, delivery systems and,
yes, ownership and reporter biases. You pay your money and you take your
choice. Now get out of my way, those Swedish meatballs look good...
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