http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com A feature formerly known as a blog, in which our narrator documents his longshot bid to make it in the publishing biz... Fri, 02 May 2008 03:04:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en What to write? I could easily write a gossip-filled analysis of the social goings-on at this year's Pikes Peak Writers Conference--complete with names, dates, and mortal sins committed. After all, it was a weekend full of drinking, cussing, flirting, rumor-mongering, boundary-pushing, drinking, young-meat stalking, agent-and-editor-meat stalking, drinking, talk of gay porn, ... http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com/2008/05/01/conference-wrap-up/ Dearest readers, I had hoped to have an entry before conference got underway, but my daycare is closed today and conference starts tomorrow. Please check back for a conference follow-up next week. Thanks! http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com/2008/04/24/at-the-conference/ Writing, as they say, is 1% inspiration, 99% sussuration? -- no -- usurpation? -- no -- constipation? ... perhaps I should look it up ... aw who am I kidding, I'm too lazy to look it up. Besides, the quote is probably not even about writing. It's probably about cooking ... http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com/2008/04/17/sweating-it/ I expect every writers group has their own shorthand--a vocabulary able to sum up mountains of meaning in molehills of words. In my writers group, there are some very efficient phrases like 1) "good point," 2) "I see" 3) "okay, I'll get right on that," and 4) "thanks," which mean, ... http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com/2008/04/11/the-pig-the-raft-and-the-bus-writers-group-shorthand/ It's been roughly five weeks since I got the wonderful/agonizing news that my book was being presented to the board at Harper Collins for possible acquisition. Since then, I have never been more than a few feet out of range of my phone. I monitor my email by the minute. ... http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com/2008/04/03/yearning/ I love my writer's group. I love them like a family. The kind of family you see in prime time television. Not quite the Cosby Show perhaps, or even Everybody Loves Raymond. More like... Hmm. Let me think about it a moment and see if I can come up with ... http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com/2008/03/20/group-therapy/ I am to jobs what last week's featured guest on Jerry Springer was to his 11 wives, 31 children and 2 girlfriends: trouble. My résumé resembles a hobo's wardrobe--ill-fitting, mismatched and full of holes. I have been a bookstore clerk, an office lackey, director of multimedia development for a software ... http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com/2008/03/13/how-to-make-it-as-a-writer-when-you-havent-actually-made-ityet/ Not wanting this diascribe to be merely a dumping ground for vomit writing, I have published somewhat infrequently. As a means of generating traffic and regular readership the effectiveness of this strategy rates a little below a schnauser mating with a tennis shoe, and a little above the war on ... http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com/2008/03/11/frequency/ During his wonderfully well-polished and well-delivered seminar last weekend, Jeffery Deaver said that he'd heard it said that being a writer is like always having homework. How apt! During my first few months in my first real job after college, I reveled in the thought that the end of the ... http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com/2008/03/06/thoughts-on-jeffery-deavers-seminar/ I got a lovely call from my agent the other day. We had both assumed my first book was dead on arrival. Apparently, however, the book had been passed from some executive editor at Harper Collins to his assistant who read it and ... loved it! The assistant had called ... http://aaron.pikespeakwriters.com/2008/02/28/hope-poisonous-thorn-of-death-beneath-the-skin/