I have the pleasure of sharing a guest post by author M.T. Bass, who advises...
Don’t be “a writer.” Be writing.
by
M.T. Bass
It’s pretty amazing all the advice out
there in the world for achieving publishing success. Sometimes I despair that I
could spend a lifetime reading, watching and webinaring, and yet not absorb the
half of it. And, gosh, there seem to be so many rules about grammar, covers,
descriptions, bios, websites, mailing lists, advertising, social media,
reviews, and on and on and on…
How did I get into this mess? Oh, yeah, I
wanted to tell a story. Funny how we forget sometimes.
So, I start the day following William
Faukner’s advice: “Don’t be ‘a writer.’ Be writing.” It’s the first thing I do
when I get up at 5 in the morning—okay, I mean the first thing after I get my
coffee. I write. Before I check emails, or social media, or the news, or the
weather, or any of the other digitally delivered distractions being firehosed
at me by my “friends” in Big Tech.
Those few hours of scribbling are the
most satisfying time of my day. And
something to look forward to tomorrow and the next day and the next.
But, if you’re telling a story, then you
want someone to hear it or read it, right?
Yeah, and here’s the tricky part: getting feedback.
I belong to a couple of writer groups for
reading and critiquing my work and the most important thing I’ve learned to do
is shut up and listen closely. Frankly, a lot of what gets said has nothing to
do with what you’ve presented. People like to talk about things they think they
know about—especially their pet theories on the proper written word.
“Too much description.”
“Where’s your hook?”
“Not enough description.”
“Run-on sentence. Another run-on
sentence.”
“Death to all adverbs.”
But if you listen closely, you get
flashes of insight that are gems of wisdom. What I find most helpful are the
readers’ speculations on who the characters are and what they think they’re up
to. I know what is going to happen. I should, because I’m the writer.
What I can’t do is turn back the clock and get the reader’s eye view of the
unfolding plot.
And after you factor in all the
meaningful critiques into your re-writes? The best advice ever is to get an
editor. No matter how many times you and
all your beta readers pour over your manuscript you are going to be amazed at
the number of typos that have slipped by. Commas are my personal nemesis.
They’re never where they’re supposed to be for some reason.
I’ve been extremely lucky to have found
Bee, who has edited all my books with an ever steady hand. And if you think you
can skip this expense, well, don’t. Just don’t do it. You’ll be sorry.
Then you’re ready to make the thousand
and one decisions about cover art, typography, marketing, blah, blah, blah…
But I look forward to those first golden
hours of the morning when I write.
*******************
by M.T. Bass
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Mystery
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
“She was one in a
million…and the day I met her I should have bought a lottery ticket instead.”
***~~~***
Griffith Crowe, the "fixer" for a Chicago
law firm, falls for his current assignment, Helena Nicholson, the beautiful
heir of a Tech Sector venture capitalist who perished in a helicopter crash
leaving her half a billion dollars, a Learjet 31, and unsavory suspicions about
her father's death. As he investigates, the ex-Navy SEAL crosses swords with
Helena’s step-brother, the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum, and an All-Star bad guy
somebody has hired to stop him. When Griff finds himself on the wrong side of
an arrest warrant he wonders: Is he a player or being played?
Lawyers and Lovers and Guns…Oh, my!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT:
The conference room was small—smaller, at least by “Big
Firm” standards, than the huge public conference room up front used to
intimidate clients, adversaries, witnesses, and opposing counsel by swallowing
them up whole like Jonahs lost in the belly of a legal whale. Tucked away in a
back corner among the partner offices, it was extremely well appointed, though
darkly so, in oak furniture and paneling. The quiet confines served as a war
room of sorts, a place where grand strategies and hair-brained schemes were
incubated, hatched and sometimes celebrated, sometimes autopsied. He knew
because Griffith Crowe was sometimes part of them.
There were no windows, which was fine with him. He didn’t
need to be seen, and, besides, he was just there to get paid and be quickly on
his way. Even in the dim, indirect lighting, he found a shadow where he sat and
sipped coffee from a massive, dark mug with Stein, Baylor & Stein gilded on
the side, patiently waiting for Lance Baylor to come back with his check.
Lance was a master of entering and exiting rooms. So, when
he burst into the room like a starlight artillery shell, wearing his white
phosphorous rain-maker smile, followed by two junior associates and a young,
very attractive Asian waitress pushing a serving cart with no doubt a sumptuous
lunch, he knew his escape would be neither clean nor quick.
“Miss me?” teased Lance, baring his canines. “I couldn’t
send you back to…to…where was it you were you off to, Griff?”
“Home.”
“Right, send you home hungry after a job well done. Pull up
a chair, and we’ll feast before you depart.”
Lance naturally took the head of the table with Griff to his
right. The two junior associates, veritable bookends with their young, already
balding pates, red ties, pin-striped suits, expanding waistlines, and leather
portfolios, sat on the opposite side of the table.
They all politely smiled at one another as the waitress set
their places and served what turned out to be Beef Wellington. After pouring
drinks—Cabernet for Lance, iced teas for the empty bookends and black coffee
for Griff—she quietly left them and closed the door.
Like an orchestra conductor, with cutlery for a baton, Lance
silently cued the quartet to begin eating.
Lance smiled broadly and looked to his right. “Good. No?”
“Excellent. My compliments to Cookie.”
“You know, our friend here was busy freeing Iraq before
there actually was an Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Lance said, turning to the two
associate attorneys, who frowned at the apparent contradiction. As if to
explain, he continued, “Special Forces, of course. What was it you did there in
the desert?”
Griff watched Lance watch himself surgically cut his
Wellington.
“Nothing really so special,” Griff said, turning his
attention to his own lunch plate.
“I suspect much the same sort of things as you may have done
here to get your name on the marquee. You know, all’s fair in love and war.”
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
M.T. Bass is a scribbler of fiction who holds fast to the notion
that while victors may get to write history, novelists get to write/right
reality. He lives, writes, flies and makes music in Mudcat Falls, USA.
Born in Athens, Ohio, M.T. Bass grew up in St. Louis, Missouri.
He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, majoring in English and Philosophy,
then worked in the private sector (where they expect “results”) mainly in the
Aerospace & Defense manufacturing market. During those years, Bass
continued to write fiction.
He is the author of eight novels: My Brother’s Keeper, Crossroads, In the Black, Somethin’ for Nothin’, Murder by Munchausen,
The Darknet (Murder by Munchausen Mystery #2), The Invisible Mind (Murder by
Munchausen Mystery #3) and Article 15. His writing spans various genres,
including Mystery, Adventure, Romance, Black Comedy and TechnoThrillers. A
Commercial Pilot and Certified Flight Instructor, airplanes and pilots are
featured in many of his stories. Bass currently lives on the shores of Lake
Erie near Lorain, Ohio.
M.T. Bass Author Links
