Welcome to the official site of India Drummond – urban fantasy, sci-fi, and romance author. Ordinary Angels, her debut novel, comes out April 2011!
While clicking around to writerly blogs as I tend to do daily, I noticed that Donald Maas is giving away his 1996 book The Career Novelist: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success in ebook format on his website. I’d read his book Writing the Breakout Novel, so I was eager to see what this one had to offer. (Besides, woohoo! Free books!)
It is full of good advice… I mean packed full. I will definitely be going back to it, probably several times. I read non-fiction in a completely different way than fiction. With fiction I hurry through, eager to see what happens next. With non-fiction I tend to read, and then put a book down while I think, savour, and digest. Then I move on when I feel like I’ve soaked up the previous chapter.
In the first chapter he talks about motivation. It reminded me how I recently read an article in which a writing blogger (and I’m damned if I can remember which one… so please tell me if you know, and I’ll give them a pingback) said that a lot of people want to be writers… and then others want to write. One is passive, the other active.
Passive gets you jack booty. Passive gives you writer’s block. Passive makes you smoke a pipe and grow a beard, but does not put words on the page. Passive kicks you in the teeth when rejection letters file in. Passive is an ass.
I'm a lot of other things, but mostly I'm a writer. I like books with fast action, scary killers, fantasy worlds, and smutty sex. Maybe even all four at once. My novel Ordinary Angels debuts from Lyrical Press in April 2011. To read about my other projects, click the My Fiction page. To get in touch with me, click Contact India and send me an email.
[...] about Ebooks as of February 4, 2009 Free Writing Book – nixyvalentine.com 02/04/2009 While clicking around to writerly blogs as I tend to do daily, I [...]
i read the same book by don as you did, nixy… will check out the other, now i’m aware if it… thx
and you’re right, passive accomplishes diddly!
btw, how does on join the nixy’s readers army?
i see no obvious way
LaughingWolf, to subscribe to the blog, click on the link that says “Entries” on the left “page” of the book. Or you can go directly to this link:
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/NixyValentine and subscribe by Reader or by Email to subscribe via email or online Reader.
I’ll have to make it more clear, so people aren’t hunting around for a way to subscribe! Thanks for letting me know.