Author Archives: James Scott Bell

About James Scott Bell

International Thriller Writers Award winner, #1 bestselling author of THRILLERS and BOOKS ON WRITING. Subscribe to JSB's NEWSLETTER.

The Writing Biz: Noncompete Clauses and New Careers

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Two things caught my eye this week I think you should know about.

1. The End of the Noncompete Clause?

Traditionally published authors authors take note (and discuss with your agent): The Federal Trade Commission has issued a rule banning noncompete clauses. Under the rule, existing noncompetes for the vast majority of workers will no longer be enforceable after the rule’s effective date on Sept. 4, 2024.

The Authors Guild applauds the rule:

The Authors Guild has long objected to non-compete clauses and advised their removal in our contract reviews. These clauses, which are purportedly designed to protect publishers’ investments by preventing authors from selling the same or substantially similar work to another publisher, are often too broad. Authors are routinely asked to agree not to publish other works that might “directly compete with” the book under contract or “be likely to injure its sale or the merchandising of other rights.” Even more broadly, they may be asked not to “publish or authorize the publication of any material based on the Work or any material in the Work or any other work of such a nature such that it is likely to compete with the Work.”

Such open-ended non-compete clauses can prevent authors from pursuing other writing opportunities. If a new project even arguably deals with the same “subject” as the book under contract, the non-compete can be invoked to prevent an author from publishing elsewhere. For writers specializing in a particular subject, this could be career-derailing.

Certainly an author shouldn’t “compete” with their trad book by, say, self-publishing a similar book in the same season, etc. The publisher does deserve some protection for their investment, and your full marketing effort to help the book succeed.

On the other hand, a writer should be free to make more dough without the threat of a noncompete hammer coming down upon them. Thus, I have advocated for a more specific and fairer noncompete. But that may be moot in view of this new rule.

However, keep watch, for there are grounds for a lawsuit challenging the rule. Indeed, one of the Commissioners strongly dissented:

The rule nullifies more than thirty million existing contracts, and forecloses countless tens of millions of future contracts. The Commission estimates that the rule could cost employers between $400 billion and $488 billion in additional wages and benefits over the next ten years—and does not even hazard a guess at the value of the 30 million contracts it nullifies.

His reason for dissenting is that “an administrative agency’s power to regulate … must always be grounded in a valid grant of authority from Congress. Because we lack that authority, the Final Rule is unlawful.”

We shall see.

2. Can New Writers Still Have a Career?

It is “staggeringly difficult,” according to industry vet Mike Shatzkin.

You don’t have to be an insider to know that there were 500,000 titles in English available in 1990 and that more than 20 million are available from Ingram (thanks to print-on-demand) today. And that everything that was ever made available remains on sale through “normal channels” (which is “online”, not “in store”) forever. It doesn’t take a math genius to reckon that a pretty stable total book purchasing and readership constituency will result in dramatic reductions in sales per title.

In a meeting with publishing vets, he came away with this:

One agent has two clients who are successful self-publishers (there are subsidiary rights and foreign rights to occupy an agent.) Two things stood out about them. One is that they both published exclusively with Amazon, without the complement (which I would have thought would be “standard”) of also working through Ingram. The other thing was that they both started working their genres (and they publish exclusively genre fiction) in 2008 or so, before the rush of self-publishers in genres had saturated the market. So they established their brands in their genre marketplace when the competition was still minimal. The agent reports that both of these authors don’t believe they’d be successful starting to do this today.

JSB: I don’t agree with the last statement as a “rule.” The goal for a writer today is not wide distribution, but growing an “own list.” That can still be done, if the quality is there. True, the “breakout novel” is rarer than ever, but it has always been the exception. The writers who make a good chunk of change over time deliver quality product that grows a readership, which they nurture via email list and some social media presence.

It is, indeed, almost impossible to get a significant advance from a publisher unless sales are assured either by a highly branded author or an author platform of some kind that has significant promise for marketing and sales.

JSB: True that! And if that noncompete rule holds up, I would expect advances to be lower to nonexistent.

Comments welcome.

Subject to Change With Noticing

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” ­— Yogi Berra

Serendipity - a Persian fairytale, 1302Serendipity is a word derived from a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip (an ancient name for Sri Lanka). The story tells of an eminent trio making happy discoveries in their travels, through accident and observation. The English writer Horace Walpole coined the term serendipity to describe this combination of chance and mental discernment.

Recently I mentioned the first modern detective story, credited to Edgar Allen Poe, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Poe was inspired by a rendition of the Serendip story by the French writer Voltaire. Poe called his story “a tale of ratiocination…wherein the extent of information obtained lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation.”

In short, stuff happens, but if you keep your head about you, observe, and are ready to think anew, you can come up with gold. That applies to writing our stories, too.

As Lawrence Block, the dean of American crime fiction, put it, “You look for something, find something else, and realize that what you’ve found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for.”

Doesn’t that describe some of the best moments in your writing? I once had a wife character who was supposed to move away for a time, to get out of danger. That’s what I’d outlined. But in the heat of a dialogue scene with her husband, she flat out refused to go. From Can’t Stop Me:

“This doesn’t change anything. I want you and Max out for a while. I’ll keep in touch and—”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, Sam. I’m not leaving. This is my home.”

“And I’m your husband.”

“And what does that make me, your property?”

“You’re talking crazy now.”

“I’m not going, Sam.”

 

Turns out she was right and I was wrong, and the story was better for it. It took some adjustments to the outline, in the form of new scenes, but on I went.

A friend of mine, a #1 NYT bestselling writer, once remarked to me, “I didn’t plan on killing this character. I started writing the scene and found him dead.”

Can we ramp up serendipity as we write? I think so. Here are a few suggestions.

  • Don’t just be about imposing your plans on the story to the detriment of happy surprises. Be ready to shift and move. This applies to all types of writers. A planner might resist changing the plans, while a pantser might resist going down a rabbit trail. What do you do in a situation like this? Think. Do some ratiocination. And then…
  • Write first, analyze later. It is in the heat of production that diamonds are formed—a striking image, a line of dialogue, a new character. But you have to be prepared to go with the flow, to play it out and see where things lead. After you write, step back and assess. Where is this new direction taking me? Shall I keep on going?
  • Write what you fear. Go where there are risks in the story. The crew of the Starship Enterprise discovered new worlds by going “where no man has gone before.” It’s often here that a deep, rich vein of story is found.
  • Research. When you delve deeply into the areas you’re writing about—by reading, talking to experts, or doing something in the field—you inevitably come up with gems that will enliven your story or even change it into something other than what you had planned. And that’s not a bad thing. I once wrote a scene about a SWAT team, doing as much research and supposing as I could. Then a chance conversation with an LAPD police captain at a neighborhood meet-and-greet led to my having to revise the whole darn thing…but in ways advantageous to the novel as a whole.
  • When in doubt, add a character. (Remember Raymond Chandler’s advice to bring in a guy with a gun?) Whenever I’ve come to a “thin middle” the first thing I do is add a character. A minor or secondary character who shows up, with an agenda and a backstory, is the fastest way to fight second-act drag.

The way of serendipity is open to every writer, be ye outliner or pantser, or anything in between. It’s just a matter of showing up and being aware. And the nice thing is that the more you write, the more you’ll recognize serendipitous moments when they happen. Then pounce!

Tell us about a serendipitous moment you have experienced in your writing.

Do People Still Buy Books?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There’s a post on Substack that’s been making the viral rounds, titled “No One Buys Books.” It’s the author’s summary of lessons gleaned from the DOJ v. Penguin Random House trial, two years afterward. Elle Griffin sums it up this way (this all refers to traditional publishing):

I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).

And:

The publishing houses may live to see another day, but I don’t think their model is long for this world. Unless you are a celebrity or franchise author, the publishing model won’t provide a whole lot more than a tiny advance and a dozen readers.

Jane Friedman, in her Hot Sheet newsletter (subscription required), emphasizes that this is the way things have pretty much been for quite some time. Her words followed by my comments:

  1. Most books don’t sell in significant numbers. This has not changed recently; it has always been the case. But if you share book sales numbers with the general public, they are generally shocked because they simply don’t know the typical sales of an average book.

JSB: According to Bookstat.com, in the traditional industry in 2020, 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies.

  1. The majority of authors, at least early in their careers, can’t survive on book advances or book sales alone.This has been the case throughout history. It’s challenging to make a living from your art, and it has always been so.

JSB: No argument there.

  1. Big publishers pay high advances to celebrities, politicians, etc. Big publishers want authors with visibility in the market. I can’t imagine this is news to anyone.
  1. Publishers do not adequately support the titles they publish with marketing and promotion. This has been a complaint of authors since I started working in the industry. I do think the problem has become worse over time, and the issues at play are complicated, to say the least. More titles are published than ever before (up to 2 million per year if you count self-publishing), media outlets and media coverage for books has dwindled, book discovery has changed in the digital era, etc.

JSB: Back in the 90s, when I started out, there were some huge advances paid to new authors, with subsequent marketing roll outs, in the hopes of establishing the next “big name.” What happened to most of these authors was that the debut novel failed to catch on, the second book in the contract was published with the least amount of attention, and the author was tagged with the “damaged goods” label—meaning no more Big Pub contracts. I can think of at least half a dozen authors this happened to. One of them wrote a PI novel that garnered a great blurb from no less than Sue Grafton. The publisher paid a ton up front. There was a big marketing push. But the book tanked, the second contracted book was released and forgotten, and the author has never written another book. (If you want to read the account of an author who went through this, survived, fought back, and thrived, I suggest you read this post from one Mr. Gilstrap).

As for discovery in the current climate, it’s certainly possible to get TikTokked to the top, or some other digital analogue, but only if the book is real quality vis-à-vis its genre. Some authors get bollixed up writing a book, maybe their first, self-pubbing it, then spending scads on ads. “Why am I not getting any clicks? Or sales?” Because first efforts are usually not top notch. Save your money and write more and better books. If you write good books, you can build a readership, because one thing hasn’t changed. The best marketing is and always has been word-of-mouth.

  1. Authors and smaller publishers have been gaining in market share since at least 2010. This is a good thing, and it’s partly due to Amazon, ebooks, and print-on-demand technology. But big publishers aren’t going anywhere, and they’re starting to partner in new ways with authors—self-publishing authors especially—and they remain powerful in the market.

If you self publish, you’re a small publisher. Act like one. Learn to think like a business. (I have a sample business plan in my book How to Make a Living As a Writer.)

So, yes, people still buy books. And if you write with consistent quality, they may even buy yours.

Do you still buy books? What portion of what you buy is in hardback, paperback, ebook, or audible? Do you still go to physical bookstores to browse, or are you mostly online now?

The Private Eye Who Nabbed Bluebeard

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“La Barbe Bleue” (Bluebeard) is a French folk tale, first published in 1697. It tells the story of a rich man with an odd, bluish beard who marries women, slits their throats, and hangs their bodies on hooks in the basement of his castle.

Thus, Bluebeard became the sobriquet for a murdering husband. Of which there have been many.

Like James P. Watson of Los Angeles, who was nabbed by the Nick Harris Detective agency in 1920.

Who was this guy?

James P. Watson

Well, he was no looker. But somehow he managed to charm women into marriage, first by placing classified ads that said “Would be pleased to correspond with refined young lady or widow. Object, matrimony. This advertisement is in good faith.”

And he got lots of letters in response. He would go through them and weed out the ones he thought were not “quality,” then set up appointments with the others. It would be in a fancy hotel, and the well-dressed Watson would entice them with promises of a home, world travel, the finer things in life.

Those who took the bait headed to the altar, usually within weeks. As soon as the happy couple got into a home, Watson would announce that he had to be away for awhile on business….because he worked for the government trying to nab diamond smugglers. Then he’d go visit some of his other wives, and dispatch a few of them.

It was a game to him.

According to a story by reporter Katie Dowd:

In 1918, he took at least three wives, two in Canada and one in Seattle. Marie Austin of Calgary was the first to die. On a vacation in Coeur d’Alene, he bludgeoned her to death then weighted her body with rocks, sinking her to the bottom of a lake. The Seattle wife was next to go — and fast. For their honeymoon, they took a trip to see a waterfall near Spokane. As she admired the view, her husband came up behind and gave her a firm push. 

Sweet guy.

In 1920 he brought a new wife, a widow named Kathryn Wombacher, to settle in Hollywood. Shortly thereafter, he went on one of his “work trips.” Kathryn grew suspicious, and went to the Nick Harris Detective Agency.

Nick Harris (1882-1943) had been a reporter on the police beat for the L.A. Daily Journal who did such a good job he was offered a sergeant’s desk on the force. This he kept until 1906 when he opened his own detective agency.

He became famous, resulting in some screenwriting gigs and later a radio show about his exploits. For 21 years he did a weekly broadcast aimed at the youth, ending with the phrase that became part of our lexicon: “Crime doesn’t pay.”

So Harris assigned a couple of his men to surveil Watson. When he left on a “work trip” they searched the house and found a locked bag they proceeded to open. Inside they found numerous marriage licenses, wills, jewelry, and letters from women on his list to marry. They turned the evidence over to the police

When Watson returned he was arrested and charged with bigamy.

He then told them there was more going on the met their eyes. He confessed to numerous murders and led the police to one of the bodies.

Why did he so easily offer himself up? Later profilers would opine that he had reached “burn out.” He was tired. And, in true sociopathic style, was proud of demonstrating how he fooled the cops for years.

Watson pled guilty was given life in San Quentin.

Women still wanted to see him.

He wrote love poems and submitted them, without success, to the magazines. One of them was titled “My Ideal Wife.”

He died of pneumonia in 1939.

Nick Harris died of a heart attack in 1943. His agency is still in operation.

As is the first private detective firm, the Pinkertons.

The “private eye” was born in 1850. Private eye is not a colloquialism for private investigator, or PI. Alan Pinkerton, a Scottish immigrant and “cooper” (a worker of wood for barrels, buckets and the like), became a detective for a local police station in Illinois. From there he founded his agency and went national, with a high degree of success. The logo of the Pinkertons was an eye, with the saying, “We never sleep.”

That’s why they are called “private eyes.”

And on a coincidental note, it was 183 years ago yesterday that the first true “detective story” was published: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe. It set up some tropes (see Kris’s post) that are still with us: the eccentric-thinker detective (Poe called this “ratiocination”), the sidekick-narrator (Dr. Watson, anyone?), and crossing swords with the local police. And, of course, the great puzzle mystery solved at the end and explained. [On a side note, I say it’s also an example of the big cheat, because there is no way to figure out how the murders were committed without a great big dose of implausibility supposedly made plausible, and in so ridiculous a fashion that I have a theory Poe meant this story to be something of a joke.]

The private eye became a fixture in American literature when a former Pinkerton detective, Dashiell Hammett, wrote The Maltese Falcon, serialized in the famous pulp magazine Black Mask in the late 1920s. Sam Spade was first played in a movie version in 1931 by Ricardo Cortez, a Jewish actor who changed his name and parlayed his “Valentino looks” into movie stardom (short-lived, as his acting was less than stellar). Bogart, of course, immortalized the role in the 1941 version directed by John Huston.

Wave after wave of private sleuths hit the pulps, but none so successfully as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer caught on in the 50s and 60s, followed John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee. Also hugely popular was Shell Scott in a series written by Richard S. Prather.

In the 70s along came Spenser by Robert B. Parker, breathing new life into the private eye genre.

In the 80s, women got into the act via Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone.

In the 90s, Walter Mosley gave us the African American L.A. detective Ezekiel “Easy” Porterhouse Rawlins.

We could mention Tony Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn, though technically he was a detective for the Navajo Tribal Police, and not a private eye. But he must be mentioned because of an early rejection Hillerman got on his first manuscript. An editor wrote, “If you insist on rewriting this, get rid of all that Indian stuff.”

Is there still a place for private eye fiction? Look at the bookshelves. But as Kris noted, “The trick, if it can be simplified as such, is that you have to take our beloved tropes and turn them into your own.”

Not easy but, for me, entirely worth it.

Keep writing.

And never sleep.

How Not to Speak in Public

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

On occasion a writer is tapped to make some remarks in a public setting. For some, this is as enticing as a root canal, or being forced to watch The Golden Bachelor. We’ve given out some good advice on public speaking here at TKZ (you can use the search box). Today, I’d like to talk about things you should never do when giving a speech.

To help me out, I call upon the great American humorist Robert Benchley. Benchley came to prominence with a stage performance called “The Treasurer’s Report.” It was a hilarious bit about a befuddled man trying to make a dull presentation somewhat entertaining. It was turned into a short film in 1928 and is one of the earliest “talkies” ushered in by The Jazz Singer.

Benchley gave a similar performance the 1943 movie The Sky’s the Limit, starring Fred Astaire. It gives us a compendium of speaking blunders we should attend to.

Take a look at this:

What did Mr. Benchley do wrong here?

Throat clearing (literally and figuratively). He announces that he has some remarks “by way of introduction.” Well, duh! That’s why he’s up there. You don’t need to tell your audience you are there to make some remarks. Just start remarking.

Which brings us to your opening words. So many speakers get introduced, then step up to the microphone and say something like, “Thank you, Jan, for that lovely introduction.” This is the equivalent of throat clearing. These words that go through the ears out right out of the heads of the audience. They are waiting for what you to say that they haven’t heard before.

Joke intro: “I’m reminded of a story, which probably most of you have heard…”

First of all, it’s very hard to tell a joke successfully in a speech. Some people are natural at it and can get away with it, but they never announce that they are about to tell a joke. That raises expectations and increases the chance of bombing.

If you’ve got a funny line that you have tested before others, go ahead and toss it in, without any additions.

Don’t laugh at your own stories or offhand remarks. Let the audience do all the reacting.

Don’t look above the audience. Make eye contact. I usually find a few friendly faces on either side of a room to return to.

Don’t intro your slides. You’ve got slides? That’s good. When they to on, guess what? The audiences sees them. That’s the wonder of it. In any event, you don’t have to say you have prepared some slides. Make them appear, then say what you need to say about them. Which assumes, of course, you know everything on them, unlike Mr. Benchley:

And now the ending:

First, don’t drink water during your talk (unless necessary for survival).

Second, stick your landing. Know your ending. It’s that last note you leave with your audience. Don’t befuddle it.

Third, always leave sooner rather than later.

On occasion, Mark Twain would attend the services of Dr. Doane, later Bishop of Albany, but then the Rector of an Episcopal church in Hartford. The good doctor was not known for his brevity. His sermons tended to go on…and on. Twain, one of the world’s great speakers, wondered how to offer some advice to the minister. One Sunday he took his chance.

“A fine sermon this morning,” Twain said. “You know, I have a book at home containing every word of it.”

“You have not!” Dr. Doane said.

“I do indeed.”

“Well, you send that book to me. I’d like to see it.”

“I will,” Twain said. The following day he sent Dr. Doane an unabridged dictionary.

These are some big “don’ts” of public speaking. Any others you’d like to add?

Style Over Plot and Characters?

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

He was 44 years old, an alcoholic, and had just been fired from his job because of his drinking. The Depression was in full tilt. Married, with savings running low, he had to find a way to make a living.

So he decided to become a writer. Ack!

Because of his background in business (he’d been an oil company executive for thirteen years), Raymond Chandler approached his new vocation systematically.

He started with an adult education course called Short Story Writing. He read pulp magazines, especially the famous Black Mask, with an analytical eye on what the writers did in their stories. He would make a detailed synopsis of a story by, say, Erle Stanley Gardner, then rewrite it in his own way, compare it with the original, then rewrite it again. That’s not a bad method for learning the craft.

What he didn’t see a lot of was style, a certain “magic” in the prose. (This reminds me of John D. MacDonald’s goal of “unobtrusive poetry.”)

Thus he began to type on strips of paper half the normal size. This forced him to put down choice words, and if he felt they didn’t work he could toss out the 15 lines or so and start again.

He kept notebooks, jotting down potential titles, story ideas, characters, and his observations of people, especially the clothes they wore and the slang they used.

His writing routine was based on time, not output (he was admittedly slow on the production side). He sat at his typewriter for four hours in the morning, until lunch. If the words didn’t come, he didn’t force the matter. If a writer doesn’t feel like writing, Chandler said, “he shouldn’t try.” (I have to disagree with the master here. But who am I to cavil? In 1939 he published The Big Sleep, got a bunch of Hollywood money, and became famous over time.)

He wrote to please himself and the reader. He once said in a letter, “I have never had any great respect for the ability of editors, publishers, play and picture producers to guess what the public will like. The record is all against them. I have always tried to put myself in the shoes of the ultimate consumer, the reader, and ignore the middleman.”

Of the two writers he was most associated with, he had this to say: “Hammett is all right. I give him everything. There were a lot of things he could not do, but what he did he did superbly. But James Cain—faugh! Everything he touches smells like a billygoat.”

And get this, from a 1947 letter: “I wrote you once in a mood of rough sarcasm that the techniques of fiction had become so highly standardized that one of these days a machine would write novels.”

Ha! (He also said technique alone could never have the “emotional quality” needed for memorable fiction. Looking at you, AI.)

For Chandler, the priority order of fiction factors seems to have been: style, characters, dialogue, scenes, plot. He was not a plotter. Far from it. In a 1951 letter to his agent, Carl Brandt, he wrote: “I am having a hard time finishing the book. Have enough paper written to make it complete, but must do all over again. I just didn’t know where I was going and when I got there I saw that I had come to the wrong place. That’s the hell of being the kind of writer who cannot plan anything, but has to make it up as he goes along and then try to make sense out of it. If you gave me the best plot in the world all worked out I could not write it. It would be dead for me.”

There are definitely plot holes in Chandler, the most (in)famous being who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep? When Warner Bros. was doing the movie, they sent a wire to Chandler asking who the murderer was. Chandler replied, “I don’t know.”

But here’s the thing. We remember Chandler, and place him atop the pantheon of hardboiled writers, because of what he emphaszied—his style. I mean, look at some of these gems:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Ana’s that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. – “Red Wind”

Bunker Hill is old town, lost town, shabby town, crook town. Once, very long ago, it was the choice residential district of the city, and there are still standing a few of the jigsaw Gothic mansions with wide porches and walls covered with round-end shingles and full corner bay windows with spindle turrets. They are all rooming houses now, their parquetry floors are scratched and worn through the once glossy finish, and the wide sweeping staircases are dark with time and cheap varnish laid on over generations of dirt. In the tall rooms haggard landladies bicker with shifty tenants. On the wide cool front porches, reaching their cracked shoes into the sun, and staring at nothing, sit the old men with faces like lost battles. – The High Window

I lit a cigarette. It tasted like a plumber’s handkerchief. – Farewell, My Lovely

There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream. – The Long Goodbye

She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight. – The Little Sister

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. – Farewell, My Lovely

“I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.” – “Spanish Blood”

The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back. – The Long Goodbye 

So, my writer friends, what do you think? Is style the secret ingredient over plot and character? We usually talk about the importance of character within a plot, or vice versa. But Chandler worked hard for that “magic” in his prose and, well, his books are still selling!

Reader Friday: More Cowbell

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“I got a fever. And the only prescription is more cowbell!” –  Christopher Walken (as Bruce Dickinson on SNL)

 

 

“The act of writing is, for me, like a fever — something I must do. And it seems I always have some new fever developing, some new love to follow and bring to life.” — Ray Bradbury.

 

 

Is writing for you a fever, a pastime, a hobby, a vocation, an obsession … or something else?

What are you doing to add more cowbell to your writing?