Posts Tagged ‘amazon’

28
Feb

Writing, Blogging, Goals and a Good Spring Clean

   Posted by: Dave    in Writing

Writing, Blogging, Goals and a Good Spring Clean

February is at an end, Spring is almost upon us and it is time for an honest assessment of the story blog so far.

I know I have kept quiet about my goals for this month, but that is because if I failed horribly it would at least be a purely personal humiliation and also because I think that some goals have more energy if they are kept to oneself.

Goals of this Blog

My initial goals were:

  1. One post a day
  2. Make the post useful and relevant to writing, or show personal growth that is relevant to other aspiring writers
  3. Check facts
  4. Be honest
  5. Try to make posts of 500+ words of decent English

For the most part these goals have been realised.

  1. A few posts have been missed, due to ill health or other real world events, but mostly these gaps have been later filled in.
  2. I hope that the posts I have made have been useful to others but only my readers can answer that one.  As visitor numbers to the site are still growing, I assume some of what is here has been found useful by others.
  3. As far as I am aware the facts in the posts are correct and no one has contacted me to say otherwise.
  4. I believe that all posts have been honest.  Although the site is “monetised” (Amazon, Adsense etc.), I have not and will not recommend a book or other product merely because it gives me an affiliate link.  Frankly, there are better ways to make money through writing and I will not “sell” my integrity that way.  Given the choice, I would probably prefer to have this site 100% ad-free, but following my hospitalisation this is not an option as I need to make money from writing.  If I ever make enough money from other writing activities to replace a living wage, rest assured that ads will be completely removed from this site.
  5. The final goal originated from advice in the books of Stephen King and Dorothea Brande.  Basically this advice amounted to “make sure you write daily”.  I thought 500 words was a reasonable goal, if time was taken to also research the post.  Better to achieve a small goal, than to fail in a large one.

As it turns out this final point is the single most important aspect of this month’s activities.

Secrets of Successful Writing

Becoming a Writer

Due to the success of the goal of writing a small fixed amount, I have actually been driven to write well over three thousand words a day.  Compared to my old level of output this is not much shy of a miracle.

Thank you Dorothea!

This level of activity has also enabled me to have a few articles published and has changed my attitude to writing professionally, along with the whole process of becoming a writer.  In the past, settling down to write has occasionally been difficult, but now it is a pleasure that I look forward to each day.

Writing Goals for Next Month

So, what are the goals for next month?

Well, my meta-goal remains to have my science fiction novel published.  Until this happens I will remain a “wannabe”.

However, back in the real world, I still need to make money from writing to provide a living wage.  There are many ways to make money from writing and I will be exploring and blogging about them next month.

Dave Felton.

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8
Feb

TANSTAAFL – There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch

   Posted by: Dave    in Writing

TANSTAFAAFL

“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” – attributed to Robert Heinlein in his 1966 book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  It is a great book.  Buy it and read it if you haven’t already.

When I set out writing this blog one of the things that I fully intended to avoid was giving bad or unsound advice.  Therefore as a beginning writer I feel that I have no business writing “How to” articles for example.  Unfortunately I nearly broke my own code recently in a fit of enthusiasm.

Every day I trawl the internet for ideas for this blog; creative writing, science fiction, general education and such like.  As is typical for the internet some of what I come across is rubbish and occasionally some of it is gold.

Well, I recently came across what I thought was gold and was tempted to blog about it here.  Of course the idea seems like a good one and there is a huge urge to share, but I have absolutely zero idea if it actually works!

While I was writing a long and enthusiastic post Heinlein’s words were ringing in my ears along with other wisdom such as “If it looks too good to be true, then it probably IS too good to be true”.  Maybe the cynical old goat in me won in the end.  Accordingly, I will explore the truth or otherwise of the situation and only post when I have some facts.

So what was my great idea?  It is hardly a new one, but it is something that I hadn’t actually seriously considered before.  It relates to writing articles online for cash, for sites like:

http://hubpages.com/

At the moment I am writing maybe one blog post a day, one short story a month and a novel maybe later this year.  The blog is mostly a labour of love, although I might kid myself it will help me become better known.  The short stories, even if all were published they will net me maybe £2-300 each.  The novel and its mythical advance payment is a totally unknown item.  None of these things are going to reliably feed me.

The sensible side of me knows that if I am to earn a living as a writer (one of my long term goals) then it will likely be damn hard work, so when a website offers me hard work and a little cash I jumped at the idea – only later considering if it was a real offer and not just hype and a con job.  Even writing this now I am no wiser.  The only solution is to try it and see.  Maybe I can make some lunch money?

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25
Aug

Hello world!

   Posted by: Dave    in Internet, Writing

Hello world!

My name is Dave Felton, I am a forty-something year old writer wannabee.  This is my blog.

Hello and welcome.

So, now we have the formal bit out of the way lets get down to business.  Why should you care?  I mean, there are many blogs you could read if you so chose; why read this one?  What’s it all about?

My plan, if there ever really was one, is to share some of the experiences that go into being a writer. The good and the bad.  Perhaps sharing these experiences could help others?  At the very least it should be good personal psychotherapy, if a little public!

One aspect of sharing these experiences that already springs to mind is that in learning to improve my writing I have read a large number of books on the subject. The Amazon.com reviews of these books seem to be always glowing, even if the book actually stinks and is almost useless. While I don’t think it is appropriate for me to criticise these poorer works, I can with clean conscience point out those books I have read and used that were genuinely helpful.

No doubt other purposes for this site will come up in due time but for now this is at least a useful start.

Dave.

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