CONTENTMENT COTTAGE

WELCOME! In the midst of each life's chaos exists a place of calm and sunshine. I call mine Contentment Cottage. It is the place where I write my stories and find the peace of God. I've posted my "Ice Pick" reviews and will continue to add some of what I call my "Ice Crystals": poems, articles, essays, fillers, and recipes.

Friday, October 20, 2006

THE ICE PICK

The Writer’s Essential Desk Reference. Cincinnati, Writer’s Digest Books. ISBN 0-89879-759-4. $24.99.

This is a book for serious writers. By serious, I mean those who either are, or want to become, professionals. These are people who don’t write just for themselves, friends, and family, but who want to be published authors.

It includes information on "Living as a Writer," e.g. health insurance, contracts and literary rights, dealing with agents, setting up a freelance business, bookkeeping, home office expenses, taxes, whether you should incorporate or not, and how to judge whether a publication is apt to stiff you for payment (as Pulphouse’s The Report did me when I was starting out--not a fun experience for a new writer).

Lists of professional associations, retreats, conferences, fellowships, university writing programs, and correspondence schools are provided, along with advice and caveats and the relative advantages and disadvantages of different programs. Information about evaluating writers’ groups or creating your own is also included.

The rest of the book involves the actual production of your writing from research through selling it.

The chapter on research explains interlibrary loan; online researching; getting permission to use others’ copyrighted material; as well as obtaining U.S. government documents, scientific reports from the National Technical Information Service, and specific facts from individual government agencies.

There is also a section on some of the special needs of researching for fiction.

Desktop and self-publishing, and working with artists, collaborators, grammar services, graphic designers, illustrators, indexers, printers, proofreaders, translators, and typesetters are covered in the chapter on producing and polishing your manuscript. I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t give any information about traditional publishing, but the book is billed as a companion to Writer’s Market http://www.writersmarket.com, and they probably assumed that submitting to publishers is adequately covered there.

The chapter on selling your work includes in-depth analyses of freelancing for newspapers, radio and television, advertising, and technical writing.

Also included is a section called "Promoting Yourself," which discusses the pros and cons of advertising and book reviews, public speaking, TV and radio publicity, and hiring a publicist, as well as dealing with bookstores.

The final chapter deals with writing for Canadian markets, researching Canadian subjects, and selling in Canada.

Throughout the book are lists of further sources and resources on all the topics discussed. And these are all nicely indexed. There is, in addition, an excellent subject index.

Most of the book is aimed at nonfiction writers, but there is plenty here for fiction writers as well. If you are a serious author, you should at least take a look at what this book offers.

{Published in GPIC, the Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers Newsletter. Feb. 1999. Reprinted in SF & Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, June 2000.}

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1 Comments:

Blogger Diana said...

The new edition is Aug. 2001. I don't know why I didn't always put the pub dates on these when I did them. But you can always "amazon" or "barnes & noble" these to find out current dates.

6:32 AM  

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