Walter Greatshell on Writing

Hello Fellow Writers!

I've been plugging away on my erotic romance "The Art Thief's Punishment" ever since I got a 'revise and resubmit' letter from Ellora's Cave. I think it's going quite well so far. I still haven't heard back yet from Harlequin about the partial they requested of "The Movie Star's Very Personal Assistant". I watch the mailbox daily with my fingers crossed that they will request a full.

I've been going to my second Advanced Writing Workshop at WCC and working on "Snowed in With a Millionaire" there. Very few changes have been made since the instructor, Vinny, has been liking the story as is. This week I plan on writing a synopsis so that when I hear back from Harlequin about "Movie Star" I'll be ready to send them "Snowed".

I recently read "Xombies: Apocalypse Blues" by Walter Greatshell. It was a great book and I read it so fast because I found I didn't want to put it down! It was horror mixed with science fiction, and there was no romance, so it wasn't the sort of thing I normally read. I read it because my father suggested it. I'm glad I did!

Walter Greatshell has an article he wrote about writing called "Playboy Loved Me: Confessions of a Freelance Failure" on his website, waltergreatshell.com. Read the whole article here, this is an excerpt:

I am a writer, though my lifetime of writing has not earned me as much as a year working at Dairy Queen. I always knew I was going to be a writer, and that I would have to go through a period of "paying my dues." I just didn't think it would take so long. Perhaps my naivete was fortunate, because if I had it to do all over again I think I would go with my childhood ambition: to be an ichthyologist. Study little fishies.
All writers are doomed by their initial piddling success - as any driving instructor will tell you, it’s hard to unlearn bad habits. In my case I won a contest, the Independent Press-Telegram Scary Story Contest, and although they never actually printed my story (a grudge I still nourish at my breast) I did get fifty dollars out of it. A boy's first pay! It was not unreasonable to expect that it would lead to greater things, that I was a teenage prodigy on the ladder to literary stardom. In fact, that money was the biggest sum I would make from any single manuscript until I was forty.
........
Hitchhiking once, I met a motivational speaker--a man who choreographed ninjas, flaming batons and bikinied go-go dancers for the purpose of galvanizing jaded salesmen--who banished my writing problems with one word: "Volume." His cure-all solution to freelancing was to send the same article to fifty publications at a time. Be active, not reactive! It seemed sensible, and I assured him I would do it.
"We'll see," he told me. "A lot of people secretly want to fail. They just can't do what it takes."
"I will. I'll do it," I said.
"Maybe. I'll be watching for your byline. We'll see."
I didn’t do it.

I'm looking forward to reading Greatshell's other novels, especially "Xombies: Apocalypticon", the sequel to the other Xombies book. Today I'm going to get cracking on that 2 page synopsis for "Snowed in With a Millionaire" at the Panera in Fishkill, NY with my writing buddies. It's not easy taking 181 plus pages of novel and boiling it down to 2 pages. Wish me luck, and good luck to you too!
Yours Truly,
Shoshanna Evers