Tag: Writing Journey
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The Isolated Camaraderie of Debuting as an Author
It’s a strange thing, publishing your first book. Everyone around you gets suddenly excited. Your family and friends, after years of nodding along to your rantings and ravings about the competitive publishing industry, the querying trenches, and the unexpected stress of submission, abruptly show a genuine interest. They want to know about the launch events,…
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A ‘no system’ writing system
Perhaps the dirtiest secret of my writing process is that I completely lack a ‘system.’ No strict word count per day. No specific writing times. Minimal outlining. No spreadsheets of character traits or motivations. And no fancy software or virtual assistants. It’s just me and the ol’ blank page, waging war. Of course, I don’t…
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Discovering a genre while (accidentally) writing in it
When friends and family ask me about the plot of my debut novel, The Side Questers, I sometimes find myself getting cagey with the details. Not because I’m embarrassed by its content or quality, but because I can’t help but think the average person would have no interest whatsoever. After all, it’s a book I…
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Scientific vs. Fiction Publishing — The Same?
I mean this quite sincerely: Thank you, academia, for (mostly) preparing me for the agonizing pace of traditional publishing. In science, ideas can develop quickly, but their execution is slow. A typical molecular biology project looks something like this: secure collaborators, write a grant, wait six months for a review/score, wait some more to (hopefully)…
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Writing Science…Fiction
At the ripe old age of three, I wrote ‘The Man Who Lost His Hat,’ a deep tale of stick-figure regret and personal anguish (yes, I still have the “manuscript”), but apart from that, I didn’t do much writing in my early years. I recall a grade school sci-fi story co-written with my best friend…
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Revisiting my first query attempt (circa 2019)
Querying a novel is a difficult thing to do. Indeed, I would argue it’s even more difficult to “get right” than actually, you know, writing the book. I’m sure there are a rare few out there who land representation from the very first query they jot down, but for the rest of us mere mortals,…
J.J. Kochmanski 