I have not experienced a publishing scam in almost twenty years. Back in the early aughts, while figuring out the new prospect of self-publishing my first book, I did receive a few letters and emails from individuals and companies with questionable ethics and motives. It took some due diligence on my part to discover the scammers’ intentions. But that was before the creation of AI. The other day, I received my subscription email from attorney Matt Knight from his blog Sidebar Saturdays, where he detailed a recent scam attempt. I have to admit that he dealt with this particular scam with more tact than I would have. Read the full article here.
“I’ve learned that the best opportunities-and the worst scams-often begin the same way: with a compelling story.”
Matt Knight, Sidebar Saturdays, Publishing Scams Are Getting Smarter, July 25, 2026
What scares me the most is how AI can readily access all the necessary information for a good scam: your work/career; background; SM accounts; previous publications; even unpublished works stored in cloud software, for a successful scam. They compliment you, play on your ego, betting you’ll be so flattered that you won’t think twice about falling for their sycophantic scam.
The addition of AI certainly makes it harder and harder to differentiate which offer is a scam and which is legitimate. Best to keep your head about you; think it through before reacting to the stroking of your ego by the scammers. Praising you is how they get you-every time. It’s the sticky sweet and tricky nature of false praise. Unless you arm yourself with the understanding that this is how they work.
“In the age of AI, publicly available details can be collected, summarized, and woven into a polished message in minutes. A highly customized message is no longer proof of legitimacy.”
Matt Knight, Sidebar Saturdays, Publishing Scams Are Getting Smarter, July 25, 2026
Publishing scams continue to rise and it behooves every writer out there to be smart and learn how to recognize potential scammers. Protection of IP (intellectual property) as well as your personal information is paramount these days. One of my previous blogs details what writers need to know and how to preserve their IP. Clean up your online life: SM, pictures, blog posts, personal information (especially via data mining sites, where anyone can access public records on you), etc. Make it harder for scammers to find out so much about you, to find your weak spot. Because they’ll look – actually their AI tools will look – and they will find you.
Here’s some good advice from Matt’s blog post on publishing scams – I recommend printing it out and taping it near your computer, so you won’t forget…
What Every Writer Should Do
Whenever you are contacted about your writing:
Verify the sender independently.
Ask to correspond through an official company email address whenever practical.
Research editors and agents through independent sources—not links contained in the email.
Confirm that the person’s public professional role matches what you are being told.
Verify the specific email address, not merely the existence of a real person with the same name.
Do not send unpublished work until you are satisfied with the recipient’s identity.
Never feel rushed.
Never treat flattering or highly personalized language as evidence of legitimacy.
Professional publishers understand due diligence. Scammers count on excitement outrunning judgment.
(I reread his post, including the emails he got from the purported scammer. I did notice the email, bloomsbury@paulbaggaley.com, seemed backwards. Normally, one’s name comes before the @ sign and the company name follows it. That would set off alarms for me.)
Quote by author Elizabeth Gilbert from the book/movie, Eat Pray Love
Lesson Learned…Again and Again
I watched Eat Pray Love again last weekend, for the umpteenth time…and each time I watch it I glean some lesson, either newly learned or temporarily forgotten, from the wise and wonderful words written by author Elizabeth Gilbert. I found the book much funnier than the movie because her voice was more present in the writing but not in the overall script. I keep returning to the movie for bits of badly needed wisdom, as if it were a roadmap of my own life.
Like Humpty Dumpty, Only Better
What always hits home for me is the quote above about transformation. About getting knocked down repeatedly and rearranging yourself or your life because it’s necessary in order to move forward, out of a stuck place. The message is: You have to be willing to fall apart to put yourself back together again.
It’s also a bit like my Badly Designed Parking Lot post…because it’s about recognizing what isn’t working for you in your life (job, home, relationships, writing gigs, etc.) and making a conscious decision to change what needs to be changed. Change is always chaotic until the cycle is complete. Only then can we see in hindsight that those changes were right and necessary, however uncomfortable. Getting out of our comfort zones is what activates us; staying in those comfort zones (fear of change), whether you realize it or not, is not all that comfortable. It’s just familiar (read: less scary).
Ouch, That Hurts…
As of late, I have been banging my head against the proverbial brick wall with – surprise – the same (undesirable) result each time. And when I made a decision to finally and completely let go, I went quiet inside because, as I now realize, it was the right decision, no matter how risky I deemed it to be. The proverbial leap of faith. And it paid off.
Long story short: Two years of temp jobs weren’t working out (for a variety of reasons) and the last one, due to run about eight months, was cut short after only four days, by the client. I wasn’t all that upset – which surprised me – but my approach to this ongoing issue (that brick wall I’d been banging my head against for two years) was simple and logical. I sent an email saying I no longer wanted to work for the agency or their client. I was done being chewed up and spit out.
We are often forced down that road to transformation because we reach a boiling point, a point where no amount of contrition from the trespassers will keep us from making the right and necessary decision.
The Relief, the Freedom
My (new) passive income kicked in this month and allows me time for art projects I’ve been putting together. Hundreds of ideas zip around in my head and my imagination has free reign in my brain. Now I have both options and time (but not too much $$ but that too can be changed with a little effort). What a feeling. A family member responded to my news with this: “So you have joined the ranks of the “senior, experienced, wise, freed up, interested, etc. Enjoy while you can.”
I plan to. Because all the ruination/transformation that has defined so much of my life seems to finally be winding down. And I can breathe. Truly and deeply. And it feels oh, so good.
And so can you. If only you let go. So what are you waiting for?
Vintage Alphabet Source: Google Images/pixiepaperstore.com
Used to Be…
Growing up before the Internet and a digital world, my generation learned much via “the old-fashioned way” – like cursive and script writing. I have vivid memories of the Roman alphabet in upper and lower case bordering the chalkboards of my grade school classrooms.
Sister Rose de Saint Marie taught our second-grade penmanship classes and she was a typical hard-nosed teacher/Catholic nun. I religiously (pun intended) practiced my penmanship at school and at home. Which is why, all these decades later, I’m still complimented on my handwriting.
There were two classrooms each for grades 1 through 8 and penmanship was taught daily at least until sixth or seventh grade in our Catholic grammar school. I even remember the paper we used: solid lines on the top and bottom for the upper and lower parts of the capital letters and dotted lines in the middle for the lower case letters.
Loss, Not Change for the Better
This morning, as I filled out a financial document, I realized that a pen in my hand felt a bit strange. I don’t like that. I spend less and less time writing longhand, whether in cursive or script, unless I’m leaving a note to myself. When I do pick up a pen, I hesitate for the briefest moment as I reach into my deepest memory bank for that familiar sensory memory. It’s as if I’m forgetting how to sign my name with the characteristic loops and artistic flairs that have long been my mark.
Losing my longhand skills means, to me, losing a sense of myself.
We are losing the personal touch, the individual-ness of each human, becoming less so as AI infiltrates our lives. Google is the answer to EVERYTHING, right? Can’t spell a word? Google it. Not sure if it’s a verb or adverb? Google it. The internet has short-circuited our ability to learn via sensory memory (touch, taste, smell, etc.) and in the process something very personal, unique to each of us, is lost.
“When I do pick up a pen, I hesitate for the briefest moment as I reach into my deepest memory bank for that familiar sensory memory.”
For Some, the Long Way is Still Best
J.K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books in longhand and still writes that way. Imagine the difficulty in maintaining the pace of your writing with what’s whizzing through your mind as the story unfolds. How many writers today are even willing to attempt such an undertaking? Still quite a few, thankfully.
“A friend of mine who’s a film director turned me on to the Blackwing 602. What I like is that it sharpens to a really fine point, and it’s got a great feel to it that I just can’t describe. It’s like when you taste a really good wine or a cognac: You know it’s good stuff.”
Andre Dubus III, author of Bluesman and House of Sand and Fog
For me, the Digital Age provides too many shortcuts, too many quick ways around learning what we need to learn. Forget working out a math problem with a pencil and paper; now Brainly will do it for you. But what is lost in the process? We lose the concept of critical thinking; how to get from point A to point B. Working out a problem, like writing in longhand, allows our brains and minds to problem-solve, which translates into many other areas of our lives as we grow. We can’t afford to lose it or I fear we’ll lose some of our humanity.
“A pen is a much more primitive instrument. You feel that the words are coming out of your body and then you dig the words into the page. Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.”
Writing longhand is a form of sensory memory and connects us to each word in a story and the story itself, as a whole. It fortifies memory and the ability to spell, to slow us down enough that we get the story on paper without too many revisions. We become more deeply engaged in our stories.
“Studies have shown that writing (and rewriting) information in longhand is one of the most effective ways to retain new information; this is apparently because writing the old-fashioned way stimulates a part of the brain called the reticular activating system, or the RAS.”
Laptops may allow for the collection and storage of information – but on the laptop, not in our brains. Efficiency is nice but LEARNING and RETENTION are more important. So in the best interest of humanity – pick up a pen or pencil and have at it.
Deepen your writing, deepen yourself.
A quick post-script (11/4)
I was so enamored with the thought of getting back into longhand I purchased some sleek cedar-scented graphite pencils. What a joy to use! Brought back some nice childhood memories… and inspired me to write this little ode to pencils:
The Poetry of Pencil
Smooth charcoal, cedar scent
a cherished childhood of homework spent
writing and re-writing until perfection or corrections attained.
Mathematical problems, grammatical errors
erased with ease;
Sharpened stylus dulled with use,
scratching numbers and letters in columns and rows,
Last week I lost a family member; it was a rather sudden, unexpected passing. I’d not seen him in many years but it did not diminish my feeling of loss. I remembered him as a sweet, gentle, quiet soul and his obituary, which read more like a loving eulogy a family member would give at a service, echoed that same sentiment.
That got me thinking. In two previous posts I emphasized the importance of getting your Digital Property (blog 1, blog 2) in order so that those left behind when you’re gone can manage your completed (and not completed) works. And then I thought: What better way to up one’s writing/skill level than to write one’s own obituary? It’s often an assignment in writing classes as it provides a sense of mortality and an intimate examination of our lives, as well as our place in this world (or at least what we hope it might have been).
How Do You See You?
What will you write about yourself? Would you include your accomplishments, hobbies and (mis)adventures? What would you leave out? What will you leave behind? To whom will you leave your belongings? Family? Charities? Or just donate it? If you had to do it over again (life), would you change anything? Leave anything undone, incomplete? It’s a sobering experience, trying to see yourself the ways others might. The first time I attempted this exercise I found it difficult to decide who got what – if anybody actually wanted any of my crap to begin with, they have enough of their own. The second time was a bit easier, as awareness of my own mortality felt more real.
Then I felt a strange fear, as if I’d suddenly gotten a glimpse of the universe, less me.
Go For It
Be colorful; use apt descriptives and pictures to express who you were in life (like the image above). These days, everything goes online for family to see and they can “sign” an online memorial book. How do you wish to be remembered? Are your stories/works included in that legacy? We’re told to take control of our lives, to own them, so why not own your obit? Let the world see you as the artist, writer, sculptor, etc. that you are, and in YOUR words. Give them an opportunity to revel in what you leave behind.
Think of your obituary as your last and greatest work, the final piece of the puzzle that is YOU.
It’s official; I’m now on Instagram – you can follow from the link on my website. Serendipity played a role in this decision, as I believe there are no accidents. Last week I was at my local Office Max getting some photos enlarged to sell in various home and personal forms (pillows, t-shirts, mugs, etc.) on Redbubble, when I learned of the positive effect Instagram can have on one’s business since it’s a visual-based app. A woman named Kat came to the Print/Copy center shortly after I did and I noticed what she was printing. The fonts on the cards were gorgeous; they referred to a healing crystals class she teaches. When I asked how she got started (after telling me she now did this full-time), she said she trained in architecture but due to some health issues she began using healing crystals, which lead her down this path.
Funny how that works, eh?
She also does calligraphy, which explains the gorgeous script on the cards, all done by her hand, not computer fonts. She built this part-time hobby into a full-time business in less than a year, with her products (healing crystals kits and handmade calligraphy information cards) for sale online and in physical stores. Talk about the power of positive intent: Zulilly and a company called Fare contacted her directly; they buy wholesale from her and now she’s all over the place! She explained that she did a clearing with her crystals and set her intention and, lo and behold, it all fell into place.
So I got to thinking… FREE STUFF…
Instagram is FREE and a great way to share your products with potential customers if you use it strictly for business (means: focus your business intent here). If you want to post to Instagram from your home computer, Bluestacks is a new app designed so you can upload photos to Instagram from your Mac or PC. Just download from their site, Bluestacks.com, for FREE and they instruct you on how to post from your computer. Nice if you’re home and want to spend some time away from your phone or if your work product is mainly on your computer (better security, I think).
low cost stuff
Fivver is a decent (read: hit or miss) place to get some LOW-COST marketing: 1) pay five dollars for someone to tweet about your website, books, art work, etc. and you write the copy; 2) pay five dollars for someone to send a blurb (you write the copy) out to all their LinkedIn connections; I tried this avenue, with little success; probably has more to do with who their connections are and if any are within your target market; 3) pay a few dollars more for someone to create a mini-commercial that you can post on SM or your website. There are multiple options on Fivver and it won’t hurt to check out what might or might not work for you, since the initial investment can fit into a LOW-BUDGET (and tax deductible, by the way, so keep all receipts!). Also a good avenue for SELF-PUBLISHING NEWBIES to get their marketing feet wet.
low tech, low budget, self-publishing stuff
Handing out FREE bookmarks with your logo, website, etc. is a good LOW-TECH way to market yourself. I keep a supply in my purse just in case, and I hand them out everywhere – cafés, post office, local coffee shop – wherever I’m talking with people. They’re inexpensive to buy in bulk and easily fit into carry bags/purses. Vistaprint is one good source and they provide good quality products. I also designed a business card with the book cover of my nutrition book as the whole card; the colors are bright and eye-catching and always get a positive response when I hand it out. With a good promo, you can get 250-500 business cards for free or less than $20 on Vistaprint, a good option for LOW-BUDGETS and SELF-PUBLISHING NEWBIES.
more low tech (and affordable) stuff
Car signs (window) and magnets (door) are affordable LOW-TECH options, especially if you do a decent amount of driving around where you live (and a good motivator to go out for a drive so everyone can see your signs). It’s also a good way to get folks directly to your website instead of Amazon or Ingram (where they can often buy it cheaper, which means less commission for you); they can then see what else you may have to offer. Plus: If you have to park on the street as I do, everyone who walks by or drives by sees your car signs. Win-win!
not so easy but worth it stuff
If you have more than one business or money-earning hobby, building a landing page (GoDaddy and Wix have nice options) lets you keep all of your work in one location, giving potential customers more options to shop with you. However, no matter how much they advertise easy it’s to build one of their sites in “less than an hour,” it can take more than the hour they claim if you’re TECH-CHALLENGED, also making this a NOT-SO-EASY option for some folks.
Which easy, not-so-easy, free, low-tech or low-budget options have you tried? Were you successful? If not, why not? I’d love to hear what worked for you, what avenues you took to bring even the smallest success. Feel free to comment so we can all learn from your business acumen!
There’s an ancient Chinese proverb (I’m paraphrasing) that says a smart man learns from his own mistakes; a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
My literary Inbox today: “Same old, same old” advice on writing books, marketing books, building a fan base, following the blogs of award-winning authors, blah blah blah. Today is my Groundhog Day for unoriginal blog articles on writing, selling and marketing books. I’ve heard it all before. Where are the fresh ideas? How many times can they recycle the same messages over and over again? I get it; they’re the constant nudge, the ever-present voice in your head, urging you in that direction where you actually reach a publishing, marketing or sales goal, small or large, oddly resembling subliminal messages: You are a marketing guru; you will sell more books and make more money; more readers will follow your blog, listen to my voice…
The Never-Ending Grind
What if writing is a hobby for you? What if you’re not earning anything close to a full-time paycheck with your book sales? Lots of expert advice available online about marketing, hiring people (virtual or in-person) or companies to do it for you. Do these bloggers assume that most (serious) writers have the available cash to spend on these “necessary evils?”
Book experts touting the latest, the greatest, the essentials for winning more fans, earning more, being more, doing more, in an ever-growing competitive field where it’s getting harder and harder to find your niche. It’s the never-ending game of “let’s see how many people will buy my advice on [some] new marketing avenue.” Talk about even more responsibility, more time spent trying to get your books into the hands of millions of readers. Okay, maybe not millions, unless you’re a bestselling author and your books are available in multiple languages.
*deep sigh*
Time…for Life?
When do you work your “real” job (if you have to have one, as many writers do)? When do you spend time with family and friends? When do you make time to write? Only so many hours in a day, a week, a month, this thing called time. Yes, it’s essential to prioritize, to make room for each aspect of the writing/marketing/selling process but have we sacrificed other areas of our lives (read: time) for this?
If I sound exasperated, it’s because I am but I continue to rebel, to question, to be the “devil’s advocate” in the room (and on the blog).
Caveat:
“Sometimes it’s the people no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” From the movie, The Imitation Game
In our local News & Review paper, I read an article titled, “The Man Who Saved Reading.” Honestly, I didn’t know we were in danger of losing it, like an endangered animal teetering on the edge of extinction. The Great American Read, sponsored by PBS, had Americans reading by the thousands, perhaps millions. Local libraries throughout the U.S. are also responsible for keeping the literati alive in us. Series books like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games have excited the masses, of all ages, just to name two. But the article focused on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and all the political wrangling the director of the NEA had to deal with before leaving to return to his writing roots, and how he struggled against Republicans (who consider the NEA “purveyors of smut”, if you can believe it) determined to cut their budget down to almost nothing. It seems to me that the one of the reasons for this is we value success more as a measure of financial and material wealth rather than as knowledge and wisdom gained through the enlightenment found in books.
The author of the article, Scott Thomas Anderson, wrote: “In 1953, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 described a future where novels are relics and human thought is enslaved by interactive screens.” Talk about foresight – and forewarned. The NEA directed the U.S. Census Bureau to conduct a large survey on the participation in the arts. This was the shocking result:
With the rise of digital media, less than half of U.S. adults were now reading literature.
Ouch. To top it off, the survey showed a ten-percentage point decline over the last twenty years, a loss of twenty million potential readers. Ouch again. This drop, according to the survey, spread across every age group, every ethnic group, both genders, and all income levels. The steepest decline was among persons aged 18 – 34 (the Digital Generation). Yikes.
Anderson also wrote: “Other studies by the NEA also showed that people who didn’t read books were less likely to vote in elections, volunteer for charities, and support cultural institutions [and, I believe, be less informed about life and different cultures in general].” If you don’t read and activate your imagination, get outside of yourself and escape into a good book, how can you vote (awareness of the issues), be more open-minded, and be willing to serve others?
The results make sense to me, especially the forewarning by author Ray Bradbury. You see it everywhere: people plugged in to their earbuds or headphones and tuned out. I can’t count how many times I’ve had to walk around young people so deep into their phones they didn’t even see me. We use computers (phone, laptop, etc.) to look up words and they finish the spelling for us. How can we learn/grow if machines do all the work? While technology certainly has improved some aspects of our lives, I also believe they’ve made us lazy because they can do so much more, much faster than humanly possible. (I still prefer to look up words in a dictionary, it keeps my spelling skills fresh.)
As writers, we can’t let good literature go extinct; we must rail against the onslaught of technology by producing worthy work. Are we, the authors, writing good stories to enthrall the masses, to keep good literature from disappearing? We MUST. It’s one of the reasons I no longer publish in eBook format. I prefer the feel of the book in my lap, the smell of the pages (especially the older classics, they just smell better), the look of some fonts, the touch of a good leather binding. It’s all a part of the reading experience and we, the writers, must do what we can to ensure that book reading does not go the way of the dodo bird. We must create good literature, evoke wild imaginations; we must inform, teach, and tell the good story worth reading.
I’m not sure when it happened, or why. After my trip to Italy, I figured I’d get to writing, pick up where I left off with several projects piled near my desk. Not so. When I sat down at my computer the other day, determined to work on something, I couldn’t do it. I opened up several files, perused them, and then closed them. No writing juice, no aspiration to finish any of my open projects.
Where’d my mojo go?
Not Feeling It
When I quit my job in October, I was convinced I’d finish at least one in-the-works project, what with so much free time on my hands. I even blogged about it, telling you exactly what I’d do. Only I haven’t. And I’m not sure why. It doesn’t feel like writer’s block; it doesn’t feel like anything, to be honest. What’s wrong with me? Have any of you experienced this? Do I ride out the avoidance storm, hoping it will pass? Is writing something you really need to do daily to stay fresh? Have I become stale? Do I have anything more to write, any more stories to tell? Today, I’m not sure.
Writing books and selling them is a long-term commitment, whether you write one book or several or a whole bunch. You kinda have to be committed to your digital legacy. As I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps I’ve become bored with writing. That’s typical; I easily bore with the same ol’, same ol’ whether it’s a job, or a hobby, or whatever. Time for something new, something I haven’t done, to hopefully reignite my passion for writing and storytelling. I’ve been thinking about painting again. I like to mix mediums and it’s a good way to get the creative juices flowing in a different direction. I’ve mentioned this before, but maybe I need to start a new writing project. Do you find this helps you get the juices flowing again?
A Writer? …Not Sure at the Moment
Then there’s that nagging voice in my head that says maybe I’m not much of a writer after all. It usually shows up after reading a well-written book that mesmerizes me from the first page to the last. The book I refer to is Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It was, honestly, one of the best books I’ve ever read; captivating from beginning to end. He weaves a story with subplots that have subplots and you can’t put it down until you know how they’re all connected, and you can’t help but love every character, good or bad. I haven’t mesmerized anyone with my books and don’t think I ever will. Do you ever find yourself comparing your work/writing skills to someone like him? I have to dig deep within myself to find that speck of confidence about my writing to move forward.
I’ve thought about trying my hand at short stories. They do seem harder to write, though. You have to introduce the characters, weave the story in with the characters, and finish the story in a much shorter time. It’s like moving from a normal-sized house to a tiny house; you have to decide what to keep and what to discard to make it complete.
Just Write, Dammit, It’ll Come
The moral of my blog? Write what you know, write what you live, write what you dream. But most of all, WRITE. Life is full of hills (highs) and valleys (lows); be gentle with yourself as you muddle your way through a valley (as I am now), because you can only go up from there.
=> => =>
Oh, and here’s a neat tip: have you heard of PhotoFunia? It’s an awesome FREE site where you can plug a picture or text into their existing pictures to create a whole new poster, card, graphic logo, etc. It’s free all the time and really neat to use. See the typewriter graphic up top? Did that on their site. So many options to choose from, check it out. As far as I understand, they’re copyright free, too.
I can’t help it. I honestly can’t. No matter what I read, whether it’s a blog, an article in a magazine or newspaper, or a book, I can’t help but edit as I read. I instinctively pick out the grammatical errors, found online and in print all too frequently these days: run-on sentences; sentences ending with a proposition (which seems to be more acceptable but it still bugs me); incorrect words, mainly homonyms (for example: their, they’re, and there) and misused possessive pronouns (its versus it’s); not knowing when to use a (precedes a word beginning with a consonant) versus an (precedes a word beginning with a verb); and placement of commas or their overuse. They stick out like sore thumbs for me.
I’m sure it harkens back to my private Catholic grammar school days (pun intended) where Catholic nuns with metal-sided rulers were quick to whip knuckles for the slightest error in English composition. Before the typewriter found its way into our home, I wrote and rewrote every paper I ever had to write, all the way up to and through eighth grade and my early high school years.
All This, From So-Called Professionals…
This morning was no different when I opened an email from a writer’s blog I follow. His specialty is advice on finding paid work as a freelance writer. Today’s blog was so full of blatant errors I couldn’t take his advice seriously. Immediately I thought does he write like this for clients? The article overflowed with grammatical errors: excessive/incorrect word use (using most when best is appropriate, the overuse of very and just, and redundancy, to name a few); misuse of homonyms (verses instead of versus when talking about writing a comparison article); and past/present tenses and singular/plural nouns all in the same sentence. I gave up in disgust before I was halfway through the blog.
Back in June, I posted a blog titled Graphic Un-Design, where I moaned about a new book cover that did not materialize as I’d hoped. What bothered me was the quality of the final product. I wrote: “…how devalued graphic design work has become with the advent of the Internet” and that so much of the work lacked “style and originality.”
I believe this to also be true of English grammar and writing in general, what with the advent of the Internet and the plethora of so-called (read: self-labeled) “online experts.” Far too often, I read articles and blogs where people are writing as they talk instead of editing for flow and clarity (and, ugh, spelling). A lax attitude has superseded the ability to accurately convey information or communicate one’s thoughts in general.
Writing, a once proud field where it was as important to be grammatically correct as it was to inform and entertain, is now chock full of lazy copy, lackluster prose and poorly presented information, regardless of the topic. This younger generation concerns themselves less with the details because they’re more focused on having their say, regardless of how they say it, no matter how ambiguous the message (or grammatically incorrect).
We cannot give up the good fight to maintain our writing integrity if we want our work to be taken seriously. Take advice from people who write as well as they speak (and vice versa) because it raises the bar – and demands more of us and our work.
Memorial Weekend loomed and my anticipation escalated; I’d been looking forward to this for a long time. Over the past year or so, I have contemplated changing the eBook cover to my fiction novel, Rescue on White Thunder. The basic cheesy cover was not really helping sell my book and I obsessed over making a change. I also discovered a few writing errors I’d missed with my hundreds of previous edits, so I set about making those changes to the manuscript but delayed a new book cover due to budget constraints. With all the options out there on the World Wide Web, surely there was someone I could afford to have design a new cover for my eBook.
Or so I thought.
The Fiverr Foul-Up
I stupidly went to Fiverr to get an affordable book cover since I’d had good luck with my nutrition book there (well, sort of…long story that ended in my favor). I located a young woman here in the U.S. (which is difficult, since many of the people on Fiverr are not). After reviewing her book cover portfolio a few times, I made the decision to purchase a book cover from her.
So much for that bright idea.
First, the order arrived later than promised. When I saw the email that my work was completed, I anxiously opened the message, anticipating a sparkling new cover that would sell gazillions of copies of my book. The new cover looked NOTHING like the book summary I’d sent. Did she even read it? She’d created an urban design (think tall city buildings, paved streets, gray/neutral cover colors) for an adventure that takes place in eastern Idaho (think woods and mountains). I sent the cover back with a revision request, my hopes dashed in an all too quick moment of ecstasy.
I waited for a response.
And waited.
And waited.
By now, Memorial Weekend was almost over and still no response. Perhaps she’s working on the revision, I tried to convince myself. It is a holiday weekend, maybe she’s out having fun, I excused. By the end of the weekend, there still was no response. With great regret (and an imagined loss in gazillions of book sales dollars), I cancelled the order and requested a refund. Oddly, she responded to that request within twenty-four hours.
Hmmmm…
E-book Epiphany
It made me rethink the whole eBook thing. With scammers on the rise and sites offering free copies of eBooks illegally (I had this problem and it was a pain to clear up), I made the decision to take my book off of Amazon, at least for a short respite while I re-evaluate. Instead, I will invest in a new book cover for a hard cover print book because I think that will serve it better than even a paperback style. Seems to me that print books sell better, as people still like to ‘curl up with a good book’ and a hot cuppa. I know I do. (Just today I finished a fabulous fiction titled Three Souls by Janie Chang – what a fun ride this book was.) And I’ll have better control over scamming issues, since it’s harder with print books. I imagine I’ll still have to deal with the occasional idiot third-party seller on Amazon trying to sell my work for an ungodly amount.
Less Is Not More
Part of what bothers me is how devalued graphic design work has become with the advent of the Internet and the multitude of websites where we can find these so-called experts in graphic design. I’ve reviewed many portfolios and now see a pattern: each graphic designer has a singular style that is used for all of their projects, changing only color, font, and background as dictated by the genre.
Even the young woman who created my nutrition book cover falls into this repetitive pattern as a blueprint in her portfolio, which I didn’t notice until after the fact. It’s bad enough we have additives in our foods to make them all look and taste the same in every bottle and can; now graphic design is following suit. Conformity, lack of style and originality; unless we can afford only the best of services, many writers are doomed to copycat book covers with little novelty.
Caveat emptor, my fellow writers – Buyer Beware.
And, lest you forget, you get what you pay for, so make it worthwhile.
I was more than a bit disappointed with my last blog post. I asked for readers’ opinions on the title of my first novel because I’ve been thinking about changing it slightly to better catch people’s attention. I did not receive one single response to my survey. Disheartening, to say the least. Which made me ponder whether to keep this blog going since I can’t seem to engage folks out there.
While I’m good at speaking in public (lectures/seminars) or talking to people in person, I don’t seem to be particularly engaging online. With that realization, I have decided that in the new year I will upgrade this WordPress blog to a full-blown site where I will have all my books available. Then I can focus on drawing attention to the books, not my musings on writing and life. Sometimes a dose of reality stings, as in this case.
But I look forward to the new challenge of putting more of my work out there for folks to enjoy. I’ve been editing and adding new chapters to my booklet on Pediatrics in Chinese medicine and it’s about 85% complete. Typical of my personality, I’ve written it with as much humor as is needed when dealing with kids and their maladies. It teaches parents how to use herbal remedies and hand techniques to alleviate symptoms arising from growth spurts and other mild issues instead of drugging them. I feel if I complete some of my incomplete works, that alone will bring more attention to my site, as I’ll have more books available to a wider audience.
Thanks to those of you, though few and far between, who have read my blogs and occasionally “liked” them. I appreciate your support.
Let’s all endeavor in the new year to create something we have not yet created, to challenge ourselves in a way that forces us to move out of our comfort zones (which, it turns out, is not all that comfortable to begin with), and to finish what we start with the same zeal we had when the idea first formed in our minds.
I’m a bit surprised at the lack of likes on my most recent post (A Lesson in Futility). I guess not everyone gets my sense of humor (though most of you usually do). It was meant to be a humorous look at the writing process for writers who struggle with choosing the right words (I can’t be the only one). So back to the serious writing advice, this time on copyright issues. There are some great tips provided by Joel Friedlander on The Book Designer website. Initially, I included the article here but was immediately contacted by an administrator of the site, giving me the impression I shared the article without their permission (even though I properly credited Joel and his website, and included the link to the actual article).
Mea culpa.
I still have much to learn about copyright issues, whether intentional or not. Instead, I’ve updated this post to include only the link where you can find the complete article. It’s a good read and it never hurts to be reminded of these important points. The Digital Age has certainly made copyright issues a bit more of challenge, I think, and many of us (including me) will make unintentional mistakes from time to time when sharing good information.
My apologies to Joel Friedlander and his admin and thanks for pointing out my copyright snafu!
My mind whirls at a pace my fingers simply can’t keep up with, so getting my thoughts down on pen and paper or on the computer can be difficult at times. Then an idea came to me: what if I tried talk to text? Speaking is one of my better skills, so why not? Nowadays most computers and cell phones offer some version of this (Dragon, Voice Recorder apps, etc.), making it easier to get our thoughts, ideas, and writing topics more organized. Or so I believed.
As I recorded this thought string, I found myself at a loss for words, except for the ums and ahs, of course. (It doesn’t help that I was walking down a busy street, running an errand, while I did this. Not recommended.) Ironically, I don’t normally use ums, ahs, or other filler words during a recording or live radio broadcast because they’re annoying and make me sound less intelligent. I’m not at a loss for words – most of the time – but trying this talk to text, for some reason, has me stumbling and mumbling.
It’s also good practice for enunciation and how you come across in an interview, which can make or break book sales. (Note to self: do I really sound that nasal? Ugh.)
It’s a good experiment to record your book or article ideas; then you can go back and listen to the quality of your words and better understand your thought process. We speak and write differently and using the talk to text will help flush out the filler words as well as provide a template for the writing process that is unique to each of us. Even if you’re writing from a narrative point of view, it’s important to watch for and listen to word flow in the story.
Go ahead, give it a try. Hope you have better luck than I did!
One of the ongoing contentious issues where I live is how to deal with the considerable number of homeless citizens. Our city has estimated that there are several thousand folks, at any given time, in this difficult and frightening situation. I frequently pass snacks from my car window to a homeless vet or other individual; I have even purposely sought out hungry homelesspeople in my area to pass along a leftover sandwich or drink. I often consider trying to talk to one of them, to find out what happened in their lives that landed them on the streets.
Police, politicians, and the community express a wide variety of opinions on how to handle this devastating situation (they’re not, actually, they just spend time arguing about resolutions that never materialize). The constant harassment by police, who then dispose of the camping equipment, blankets, and other personal items, is a sore spot for the community and especially the homeless. While many of these less fortunate people have addiction and/or mental health issues, it’s not the same story for each person.
It was because of this controversy that this occurred to me:
Every life has a story and every story has a life.
As writers, whether fiction or nonfiction, for journalism or some other purpose, it is our duty to share the stories that bind us together as a race (humanity), a community (your area), and as predecessors to a new generation of writers/storytellers. We are responsible for being honest in our characterizations, even with the creation and convincing representation of fictitious characters.
Go forth and listen to what people have to say. Get their stories. Then tell those stories in a way that moves people (emotionally, to take action, etc.). Don’t be afraid to tell the tough stories about misunderstood people (real or imagined). Use these stories to color your fiction work, whether they be shades of gray or bright pastels, and paint each life/story as important because it is.
A friend once told me each person that crosses your path knows something you don’t.
What have you learned today that can be a part of a story?
It’s Memorial Weekend and am actually off today…so a bit of relaxing and writing is in order. I watched a movie while eating lunch, instead of sitting in my kitchen staring out the window. I watched the remake of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” with Ben Stiller. Cute movie. And a reminder of something I’ve written about before – a life on the road – or at least some adventures peppered with some bad decisions.
What caught my eye was at the end of the movie where Walter is re-writing his resume, since he’s lost his job at LIFE magazine. Instead of the usual humdrum skills checklist and god-awful BORING summary (Professional with a strong work ethic and multiple years of interaction with people in various work settings…yes, this is mine…), he listed his adventures (jet boarding down some road in Iceland, jumped from helicopter into the sea, etc.). It got me to thinking..if we are to get out of that conformist corporate box of a day-to-day J-O-B and move into our lives, how would a resume like that go over?
…And Dreaming of New Answers
As a writer, I often dream like Walter Mitty of writing and traveling and earning enough to live on. Competition is stiff in most fields these days, so thinking out-of-the-box is essential to succeed, especially as a writer. I’ve got that looping tape in my head of my mother telling me to “just get a job.” It’s been there for over forty years and I’ve yet to figure out how to erase it. The movie reminded me that when we’re busy living our lives we don’t have time for daydreaming, because we’re actually living our dreams. So I’m going to re-think how I present myself to the world, because I have had some great adventures (including some based on bad decisions) and I need to give myself more credit for them.
As a writer, I know I’ll never be a New York Times bestselling novelist. I’m okay with knowing that I’m a mediocre writer – what’s so wrong with average anyway? I may have a smaller audience but they’re an audience nonetheless. The fact that there are folks like you out there, listening and hopefully gleaning something from my work, is what’s important to me now. I no longer strive to reach or grab the brass ring. I have dreamed for years of becoming a writer, only to finally admit that I AM a writer – with or without the audience or brass ring.
Lesson: Dream your dreams. Take a chance every now and then to live one out, just to see where it takes you. Then you can write all about it.
Mestengo Books 