In the latest Art-Committed Life newsletter, I seek to give back to the creative community with links to creative writing resources as well as reflections on key issues in the life of a creative. You'll learn about a new online writing community featuring workshops by accomplished authors and creative writing instructors that also includes opportunities …
Tag: Publishing
A Survivor’s Guide to AWP
It's one of the largest annual gatherings of creative writers, publishers, and educators in the United States--usually well in excess of 10,000 attendees--and the largest such event for literary writers. Once again I'll be attending the AWP Conference & Bookfair, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs' annual extravaganza. This year the hordes will be …
Road to Publication: Committed Now Available for Pre-Order (at Discount!)
So it's starting to become real. Committed: A Memoir of the Artist's Road is now available for pre-order. Even better, my publisher is offering a 10% discount to Artist's Road readers; they just need to enter the promo code PREORDER2014 at checkout. You'll be shipped the book on the day of the "soft-launch" publication, October …
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Road to Publication: Hurry Up and Wait
After weeks of frantic effort, I returned my revised manuscript for Committed: A Memoir of the Artist's Road to the publisher a day before its July 1st deadline. And now I wait. I'm learning that in publishing there are deadlines and there are dead times. I met the deadline of providing the publisher a revised …
Road to Publication: Killing Your Babies Part Two
A memoirist always runs the risk of offending the living when capturing them in prose. But he also runs the risk of offending them by omission. In Part One of this series I discussed how I have reduced my manuscript of Committed: A Memoir of the Artist's Road over the course of the last year, in anticipation …
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Road to Publication: Killing Your Babies Part One
"Your reader will never miss what she doesn't know was once there." I frequently told this to reporters in my news-editing career when I would trim their stories for length. Often what I was cutting was their favorite part--their baby, if you will--but it didn't sufficiently inform the reader on the main point of the …
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Envy, Narcissism, Depression and Creativity
Two weeks ago Facebook celebrated 10 years of making us depressed and envious by creating for each user a personalized video not unlike what you see in an Oscars "in memoriam" telecast. It was a wise move by Facebook's corporate brass to create a video starring ourselves, because academic studies show Facebook encourages narcissism; feeding the …
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Why I Left my Literary Agent
It was the hardest professional decision I ever made. Harder than leaving a stable think-tank job to join a start-up as its CEO. Harder than walking away from that successful start-up four years later to answer the call of an art-committed life. After three years of labor, with the finished memoir in hand, I chose …
What the Heck is “Indie” Publishing?
I've been involved in varies capacities in the publishing industry for twenty-five years now, as a writer and editor and policy advocate. I never could have imagined the transformations that have occurred in both technology and business models. And yet I repeatedly find myself confused by the use of the term "indie" in the context …
Do You Want a Netflix for Books?
The Wall Street Journal headline on Tuesday caught my eye: "Publishing Hears Echoes of Netflix Business Model: Digital Startups Prepare to Offer E-Book Subscription Services." What could this mean? Are we moving to an all-you-can-eat world of books? I imagined myself following the binge model of TV viewing popular now with series like Netflix's original House …
The Artist's Road 