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Craft Books Review

Margaret I. Carr

MUGGING THE MUSE:Writing Fiction for Love AND Money by Holly Lisle, an e-book available at booklocker $8.95, 193 pp.

HIGHLY Recommended! (Note: opinions expressed in this review are the opinions of the reviewer and do not constitute an endorsement by T-zero or WVU.)

So speaks Holly Lisle, a writer who has not given up and who has seventeen books in print to show for it. She has also 'paid the price' and knows that she may have to pay and pay again. In the articles and workshops in this e-book she talks about some of the bruises collected along the way and how you can avoid them.

You may have to dare to be different.

If this means that you have to write at weird times of the day, write at weird times of the day.

You may have to learn esoteric skills.

You haven't had fun until you've tried to decipher the average royalty statement.

You may find the results fall short of expectations.

The usual scheme for the payment of royalties goes like this:The publisher agrees to pay royalties in the first accounting period that comes after the end of the first full year after the book's publication. So if your book is published in January 1998, and your publisher's accounting periods are June and December, you might be able to hope for a royalty statement in June of 1999. Maybe.

You may find an obvious path will leave you facing the wrong way on a one-way street. On collaborating:

If, however, both of you are doing this because you think it will be easier than writing a whole book by yourself, go home, go to bed, and stay there until you come to your senses. Good collaborations are not simply as hard as solo novels; they aren't even merely twice as hard to write as good solo novels. They are harder by a full order of magnitude.

If this book were just about mistakes and setbacks it would still be worth buying. (The article My Five Biggest Career Mistakes, and How You Can Avoid Them, one of three written especially for this e-book, is by itself worth the cost of the book!) Add the workshops that walk you through various troublesome areas, advice on finding an agent, how to work with an editor and encouraging tips such as:

Remember anniversaries.
Keep track of the dates of your successes, no matter how minor they may seem. The day you get up the courage to mail something off for the first time, your first rejection slip, your first personal rejection from an editor, your first acceptance in a non-paying market, your first acceptance in a paying market, your first acceptance in a pro market ... all of these count. Put them up in your workspace, and celebrate them as proof that you're working and producing and improving.

For those days when the words come but they aren't the ones you want:

And as for thinking that your writing stinks . . . don't worry about it. Just keep writing. You'll get better and your internal editor will eventually shut up. And then you'll discover that you're a lot better than you thought you were.

So why an e-book?

I'm currently exploring e-books via the Internet as a method of having fewer canned-bean days and more fresh vegetable days -- we'll see how it goes.

One distinct advantage to publishing an e-book is speed. They can be available for purchase much faster and the results can be seen in as little as a month. They can also be revised much faster. With a print book the publisher is likely to want to sell the copies printed before taking any further action.

So whether you are

• interested in writing,
• making progress but want to know how to speed things up without shortening your nose by falling on it repeatedly or
• just interested in e-books, this e-book is going to give you a lot of value for your money.

Note: If you don't have anything that will read pdf you can get Acrobat Reader for either PCs or Macs FREE from Adobe

Many of the articles in this e-book first appeared on Holly Lisle’s Forward Motion Writers’ Pages which also has links to sample chapters for some of her fiction.