A blog about writing

Sports and being an author: It’s related

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Being an avid sport fan in a number of sports can be: amazing, frustrating, exhilarating, maddening, sad, fun, incredible and so much more.

But do you stop rooting for your time when they do poorly? Ahem, bandwagon fan. Do you continue to watch the games and root, root, root for the home team? I am the later. My teams since 2000 have done amazingly well. Prior to 2000 two of them did amazingly well. But the others were bottom of the barrel, trying your all but failing kind of games. My football team had one and two win seasons which was hard. But I stuck by them. I stuck by all of them. Because to me that is what a true fan is.

Being an author is the same mentality. You will have ups and downs. You will have periods of incredible highs and periods of incredible lows. Do you stop or do you continue? Do you keep at it knowing that with a bit of time, okay a hell of a lot of time, hard work things will start to look up? I know I do.

It is not easy. Just like sports you have to put in the time and effort to get to the end game whatever your endgame is as an author. If you are going to be a bandwagon kind of author than you shouldn’t be too surprised at the end results.

But if you want more than do it like your teams do it and the fans of the team. Give it your best. Put in the work and time. Do it. Because at the end of the day regardless how it ends you can at least say you gave it your all.

A blog about writing, Writng

Writing conference: Bring it

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How many of you go to writing conferences, if you can that is? Getting to hang out with other like-minded people is huge for one’s spirit and motivation.

Where I live there are not that many so I am always on the lookout for any that are not too far and not too expensive. Happily I will be attending the NCWN conference soon and with me being a member the price was reduced.

I know I have a little way to go before the day is here but I am SOOOO excited. The moods during a conference seem to vibrate apart from the murmur of people talking. Even if you can’t physically attend more and more conferences are being televised online. The chat room always brim over as the participants talk about the topic at hand. Some are also free.

To be honest who gets what it is like to be a writer than another writer? Who truly understands the time and effort it takes to go from an idea, to writing the end, to getting it critiqued to either self publish the book or start query publishers? It is very time-consuming and while one can feel fantastic when they write, “The End”, that is just the beginning.

Conferences will have publishers, agents, illustrators, editors and so much more to investigate before, between and after the classes. It is our time to really just fully enjoy our craft.

One of the classes I signed up for involves me bringing a draft of any current project. I tend to shy away from these but took a deep breath and signed up. Am I regretting it? I lost count how many time I told myself yes. LOL But the end results will be worth it. Having a group of accomplish people reading my work and helping me move it alone to the next stage as I will do for the others should be well worth it.

Is it the end of April yet?

A blog about writing, Writng

People that use ghostwriters: Do you consider them an author?

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A lot of people uses ghostwriters to write down their words. So is this a job one would be interested in or not? Well, the definition of a ghostwriter according to Freelancewriting.com is: ghost writers are writers for hire who take money but none of the credit for the work produced. The original writer, or author, is hiring the ghost as a freelance writer to produce copy writer work for a fee. The author takes all the credit for all the original work produced, including all the original writing produced by the ghost writer. The ghost, who is usually paid in advance of completing the job, gets the money as a “work for hire” job and assumes none of the credit for the ghost writing work.

The plus side is you get paid and if you do a good job you might get hired again. The bad side is you get no credit at all for your work. And to anyone who is a writer that is a lot of work to put into someone’s else name to be on the book.

So why do I bring this up? I was listing to a podcast and the person listed a host of big names from athletes, artists and others who have used a ghostwriter.

So, do you consider the people who hire a ghostwriter to be an author? From the accolades I have seen given to those who have used a ghostwriters it sounds like they are getting the credit. They did pay for the service that can never be forgotten. But can they be considered by all account an author?

I guess it all depends on who you ask. From those I have asked the answer has been no. But still asking others to get a fuller sample for the question.

The Musings of A New Englander