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I'm having a blast submitting stories to anthologies. I now have enough out there (four) that I set up an author page on Amazon.
Errors can be corrected easily in e-book versions. The author submits version 2 or whatever, and e-book readers get an update to download. With print-on-demand anyone who orders a hard copy will get the current revised version.
Spousal Unit has sold just under 30,000 books on Amazon, from his five independently published novels and the two anthologies he's in. He's feeling pretty successful...
I missed our writing group meeting last week. I'm trying to retool chapter 1 but also wrestling with an outline. I read a book Stephen King wrote about writing and he said that if he couldn't surprise himself with the ending, how could he expect to surprise anyone else? But I was going along in Poe's unity of effect. I need to know how it progresses and ends, so how can I do that? Maybe I'm not a very good writer?
I'm a "pantser," as in I do not use an outline, but write by the seat of my pants. I will start with an idea, even individual scenes or sub-plots, and write them. As I continue, they will begin to join together. Or not.
Sometimes, I may think I'm going to write scene A, but my characters decide they'll be going off in another direction entirely. Then I have to just keep up...
As for King, not every story has to have a surprise ending. If one does that all the time, then one becomes formulaic and predictable right there.
If you know how your story begins and ends, you've done the hardest part. Now just fill in the middle -- all of your surprises may well land there.
Please stop deriding yourself. Just because you write one way does not mean you're not a very good writer. Write the way it works for you, and to h#@* with everyone else. No one else's advice constitutes the "only" way to write.
Personally, I have never read anyone else's book on "how to write." That's only their opinion, and it's no more right or wrong than writing by one's own instinct.
Next up, the MC from the PinUp Noir 2 story will be in an alternative history anthology.
Last edited by Arkay66; 11-15-2023 at 03:10 PM..
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