writing

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POINT OF VIEW: A New Horizon

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New Horizons - pixabay

Hey all… In about two and a half months, my new book “The Stark Divide” will be released from DSP Publications. It’s NOT A ROMANCE. (Angel is snickering somewhere over this). Publishing a non-romancey sci fi tale is a departure for me in one way, and in another it’s not at all. We’ll get back to that in a moment. The challenge now? Everything I’ve built to market myself and all the contacts I’ve made have been geared to market my romance work. Sure, most of my romance tales are also sci fi or fantasy or magical realism. But I’ve … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Summer Cold

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summer cold - scott

Okay, so I just got back from the long-planned family reunion in Flagstaff. It was fantastic, and we took a couple extra days to explore Flagstaff and Sedona. I planned to hit the ground writing-wise and work-wise as soon as we got home. Then things went wrong. Comcast, our internet provider, was down all morning Thursday and all morning Friday. That sucked, but hey, I figured I could live with it. We de-camped and went to Starbucks for wifi. Then Friday night, it hit me like a ton of bricks. The dreaded Summer Cold. It’s a thing that shouldn’t exist. I mean, … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: The Icky Part

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J. Scott Coatsworth

Hey all, I’m at that part of the story on “Lander” that I always hit, about this far in. I’m probably three quarters finished, and all I can see is suck and ick. The writing sucks. The story is pedestrian. The threads of it are all over the place, and there’s NO WAY I am ever going to find a way to bring them altogether. It sucks. I suck. I am a horrible writer. Everyone’s going to find out. I will fail. Instead, I just sit back and laugh. You see, every one of us writers has this little internal critic. … Read more

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Point of View: I Wish I Lived in Stars Hollow

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chasm

We’re most of the way through our sixth or seventh or maybe eighth viewing of the entire Gilmore Girls series, and I find myself affected by a peculiar kind of nostalgia. It’s a longing for a simpler time, when things were less messy. Less racist. Less Trump. Watching this show, I can envision the perfect place. It’s clean, friendly, an ideal combination of small town charm and big city mores. Okay, so Stars Hollow is a little white. Maybe a lot white. But there’s something about it that calls to me, that imagines America as it could be if we … Read more

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Point of View: Taking a (Little) Break

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Scott - Break

Hey all, On Saturday, I sent “Liminal Sky”, my second novel, off to the publisher – a story that’s been in the works for three years. Then I sat down, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. I have been running almost non-stop with my writing for months, as I have been struggling to finish and submit two novellas and a novel, dealing with edits for one of the novellas and an entirely separate novel, and running a blog tour too. Suddenly, it’s all done. It’s like the clouds have cleared, and it’s blue skies all the way, baby. In three days, Mark … Read more

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Point of View: Squirrel!

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Scott - Squirrel

I just spent a couple months slogging through a fourth (or was it seventeenth?) draft of one of my novels, and then jumped right into an extension of another work. After that, I have another novel to finish up. In short, I’m working or reworking a lot of things I have worked on time and time again before. My writer brain wants something NEW! So this week, I am sidetracking a little bit and working on a BRAND FREAKING NEW short story – something for a holiday anthology I’ve had my eye on for awhile. And you know what? It feels GOOD. … Read more

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Point of View: Writing Who You Know

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reflection - Scott

There’s an age-old adage in the writing biz: “Write what you know.” This advice is suspect for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it’s difficult to apply as a science fiction/fantasy author. Tolkien didn’t “know” Middle Earth, not in the personal sense. And Anne McCaffrey probably never actually made it to Pern (though it would be really cool if she had). But the core sentiment of this adage is good – you need to do the research and get your details right. What about our characters, though? As an author, I draw on people I know … Read more

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Point of View: Here We Go Again

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Scott

I am riding the crazy train again. In just two more days, I have not one but two new stories coming out – “Through the Veil” in the anthology “Myths Untold – Faery” and my story “Repetition” in the spring “MCB Quarterly”. So I am no longer an author – I am now J. Scott Coatsworth, master promoter of the works of the obscure author of the same name. Promotion is a totally different skill set from writing. As an author, we can hide away in our writer caves and forget to shower, burrowing down the rabbit hole after our … Read more

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Point of View: Dreaming of Making the Leap

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Scott

I want to be a full-time writer. I mean, yeah, it absolutely scares the shit out of me. But right now, I barely have the time to shave once a week (as you can see), let alone write all the things I want to write. And yet, when I think about it, I realize that there are so many things that could go wrong: 1) I Could Run Out of Ideas: It’s true. There are a limited number of ideas in my writer brain. Last time I checked, it was hovering around 13,276. If I had enough time, I could … Read more

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Point of View: My Writing Plans For 2016

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Scott

Hey all, Last week I reviewed my writing year in 2015. I thought I’d flip things around this week and look ahead to my writing plans for 2016. So here are some of the things I hope to accomplish: 1) Publish My First Novel: Or at least get it scheduled. Those who know me well know that I wrote my first novel in my early twenties, like twenty five years ago (I know, right?). But it never went anywhere – it was roundly rejected by ten mainstream publishers. In my more recent writing life, I’ve stuck exclusively to short stories … Read more