This week on Hide and Create, Diana Rowland, Jordan Ellinger, Moses Siregar and Joshua Essoe talk about making money as a traditionally published author, a tie-in author, an indie writer, and a freelance editor. You’ll hear about our expenses and our revenue streams–we left nothing on the table in this episode!
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Welcome to Hide and Create your online writing workshop and podcast! The show is about the business of writing from the perspective of an indie success...
This week on Hide and Create, Moses Siregar, Jordan Ellinger, Diana Rowland, and Joshua Essoe continue the show about short story markets with Electric Velocipede editor, John Klima.
We finish our discussion of with John and pick his brain about cover letters, hooks, what will turn John off of a submission, common mistakes, and where in the world that name came from. You know of what I speak.
Bonus! As requested, William Shunn’s guidelines for short story MS formatting!
This week on Hide and Create, Joshua Essoe, Jordan Ellinger, Moses Siregar and Diana Rowland discuss the all-important, and absolutely necessary topic of self-editing.
Knowing how to edit your work is just as important as knowing how to write your work; especially as an indie writer author. Even if you plan to turn your manuscript over to a professional freelance editor, you’ve got to do the best job possible on your own before turning it over to your editor. Do your homework: learn your grammar and punctuation, and structure, and fix everything you can. Even be willing to kill your darlings if you need to. Use beta readers. The better the copy your editor receives, the better the quality and more useful the edits you will receive back, and often, the less money you’ll have to shell out.
This week on Hide and Create Joshua Essoe, Moses Siregar, Jordan Ellinger, and Diana Rowland debate resonance.
Resonance isn’t discussed much, in fact, the only author and instructor I’ve really heard discuss resonance as a writing technique is David Farland. And it can be a powerful tool. Not to be confused with plagiarism, it is catering to your audience by giving them things they’re familiar with in order to ease them into the impossibilities in your own stories.
It may sound a little hard to grasp, even a little wackadoodle, but listen on and all will become clear.
This week on Hide and Create Jordan Ellinger, Joshua Essoe, Diana Rowland, and Moses Siregar discuss writing a character of the opposite sex. Jordan talks about the “man with boobs” cliché, while Diana discusses how her background in law enforcement prepared her for writing male characters. Moses shares his thoughts on how he developed the female protagonist of his novel The Black God’s War. Finally, Joshua offers pointers on how to avoid mistakes he sometimes spots in his clients’ work.
This week on Hide and Create Diana Rowland, Joshua Essoe, Moses Siregar, and Jordan Ellinger discuss workshops for writers. We cover everything from Writing Superstars to the Clarions, and Writers of the Future. Mainly, we focus on the different types of workshops (those geared to improve your writing vs those designed to teach you the business of writing), and share a few stories about our own workshop experiences.
For Joshua’s list of recommended reading material click here.
This week on Hide and Create, Moses Siregar, Jordan Ellinger, Diana Rowland and Joshua Essoe continue the discussion with Moses on previous subjects: writing methods, writing environments, and self-promotion.
Moses shares some valuable insights on his experience with indie publishing his novel The Black God’s War, and talks about developing the setting for his latest novella “The Children of Wood and Wind”. Diana and Jordan debate how detailed you should make your settings, while Joshua expands on creating the perfect writing environment.
This week on Hide and Create Jordan Ellinger, Diana Rowland, Joshua Essoe and Moses Siregar discuss how to shift into writing full time.
In 2010 when I decided to be a full-time editor, I had studied my market for months. I spoke with professionals in that field, I educated myself, I created a business plan, I set goals for my business and then I jumped in head-first. And you know what? It worked.
You have to be in the right head space to make a career in the creative fields work. You must be willing to treat it like a regular job and be able to mind yourself when you tell yourself to get to work. Self-employment is a completely different mindset and takes a lot of self-motivation.
Be prepared. Here there be dragons — let us help you keep them all on the page.
This week on Hide and Create, Diana Rowland, Jordan Ellinger, Joshua Essoe, and David Dalglish discuss how to craft compelling and believable settings.
As an editor, one of the most frequent hiccups I see in the manuscripts submitted to me are confusing or vague settings. Sometimes the author has forgotten to write one altogether. This, as you might imagine, could hamper your readers’ enjoyment or comprehension — not to mention your ability to get the story sold.
So today, ask not what your setting can do for you, but what you can do for your setting.
In today’s writing podcast — deep, dark writing and editing secrets. We’ve all got them. What are yours?
Honestly we could probably fill more than one episode with these little guys. Rowland, Ellinger, Dalglish and Essoe divulge their secrets about writing every day, how and when to use spare moments to write, degrees, fall back careers . . . and being pretty.
Go on. Give a listen. You know you want to know.