Welcome:

Welcome Writers!

Brothers and sisters, welcome!

If you're anything like me, you came into the world of writing with wide eyes and high hopes. You decided you wanted to become a writer because it amazes you how powerful a good story can be, how completely you can be moved by words, how the real world can disappear and be replaced by something even more vivid, more potent.

If you're anything like me, when the day finally came that you decided you were ready to try to get published, when you stepped out of whatever haven you used for your writing, you were stunned to find that the skills you'd developed and honed, the tradecraft you'd spent years of your life working on had very little impact on actually getting published.

I spent years of my life trying to become a really good writer. I would sit alone in my room, typing away on the computer, or laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking of the stories I'd like to tell. Years. Then one day, after all my struggle and hard work, I found I'd written a story that I thought other people might like to read (in retrospect, it was crap, but that isn't the point). So I decided to give my story to a publisher and find out what they thought. Only, as it turns out, you don't just send your story to a publisher all willy-nilly. No, you have to go through 'the process.'

I'd spent years of my life writing in a vacuum, trying to attain perfection at a craft that I knew very little about, and when I finally stuck my head out of my hole, I came to find out that the world of publishing was nothing like I'd imagined. It was a frightening place filled with riddles and mazes and even if my writing had somehow become perfect (which, oh holy crap, it had not) I had no way to navigate, and no idea on how to move from being a writer to being an author.

What I offer here are the insights I've gained in the years that followed, insights regarding the fine art of writing, and insights regarding the brutal world of publication. I hope you find these useful.