Who Has Ever Written a Book or a Play,or Produced a Movie? | The Boneyard

Who Has Ever Written a Book or a Play,or Produced a Movie?

I am working on 2 baseball themed books/novels.
 
.-.
Tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of my novel, not self published. Still on Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites. Used the pen name Avi Morris, mostly to honor my grandfathers whom I never knew and, because it’s based on the true story of a pair of my foster daughters, I wanted to keep anonymity, changing locales etc. you know it’s fiction because I made the foster father, kind of me, a Red Sox fan. I’m a Yankee through and through. a decent number of sales and very good reviews for an unknown stiff and still gets an occasional sale. I hate the audio version over which I had no control. It’s a pretty honest portrayal of foster care, abuse, but with an
uplifting conclusion.

I’ve written a few others that got to first and even second base with agents or publishers: but years ago when I had a day job and too busy to pursue further. . All of mine are very different from the others (I have no genre) that I toyed with resurrecting. One is a political parody that actually was pretty predictive of the degree to which politicians and the cable media have incestuous relationships. The problem with resurrecting is that I thought I had created an hard to imagine US President. I fell short.
 
cohenzone said:
Tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of my novel, not self published. Still on Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites. Used the pen name Avi Morris, mostly to honor my grandfathers whom I never knew and, because it’s based on the true story of a pair of my foster daughters, I wanted to keep anonymity, changing locales etc. you know it’s fiction because I made the foster father, kind of me, a Red Sox fan. I’m a Yankee through and through. a decent number of sales and very good reviews for an unknown stiff and still gets an occasional sale. I hate the audio version over which I had no control. It’s a pretty honest portrayal of foster care, abuse, but with an
uplifting conclusion.

I’ve written a few others that got to first and even second base with agents or publishers: but years ago when I had a day job and too busy to pursue further. . All of mine are very different from the others (I have no genre) that I toyed with resurrecting. One is a political parody that actually was pretty predictive of the degree to which politicians and the cable media have incestuous relationships. The problem with resurrecting is that I thought I had created an hard to imagine US President. I fell short.
Expand ...
Publishing is tough, fickle, painfully slow and always chasing trends... and sadly good reviews are no guarantee that you'll get another book published. Stay inspired and keep at it.
 
Sibeerian said:
Publishing is tough, fickle, painfully slow and always chasing trends... and sadly good reviews are no guarantee that you'll get another book published. Stay inspired and keep at it.
Expand ...
Congrats to you and tell me about the difficulty. My publisher is on demand. So getting it into bookstores and libraries was tough. Marketing is a pain and I decided using vehicles like Twitter is mostly useless. Bookstores on consignment.

I loved doing book shows and because I had a niche, got to speak to and sell a bunch to children’s advocates and such. I have another Ive neglected for a while, primarily because of a family illness but mostly now that I’m in my mid 70s, the thought of marketing is nauseating. My political novel had serious interest for month from a reputable e-book publisher who strung me for months before deciding no. When I wrote my earlier unpublished books, self publishing was a bad word. Not so much any more. But again, the difficulty of getting a pre review and no big marketing help is not my first choice, especially with the illness taking up a lot of time.

Anyway, thanks again and with a lot of grandkids, you can pm or post here the name of your titles.
 
.-.
I'm envious of those who can write well, and can tell a story, whether fiction or non-fiction. There are many of you on the boneyard.

I am the worst writer I know who makes money writing.
 
borninansonia said:
I'm envious of those who can write well, and can tell a story, whether fiction or non-fiction. There are many of you on the boneyard.

I am the worst writer I know who makes money writing.
Expand ...

That message was well written, though.

On another note, every time I see your profile pic, and the neandertal descriptor, I wonder why you didn't go with "Ansonia Man" for your handle.
 
borninansonia said:
I'm envious of those who can write well, and can tell a story, whether fiction or non-fiction. There are many of you on the boneyard.

I am the worst writer I know who makes money writing.
Expand ...
I have three sons. All really good writers. And have to write for work The two eldest read a lot as kids. I think it helps writing One is a college prof and a natural creative writer but now does scientific papers. The second is a corporate lawyer and also a natural creative writer but now writes exclusively lawyer stuff. My youngest hardly read and is a natural creative writer and is a producer, director, writer of TV shows. My wife and I could never understand where his writing came from because he read so little. I could always write, but not exactly for a living. My day job was as a Fed lawyer. It required a fair bit of writing, but I would say it was maybe a quarter of my time tops. I could never believe how some of the material I read from people who graduated law school could be so poorly written.

For novel writing, I believe, at least for me, the first books have to be written. They are stories you want to tell. I think for some of the very popular writers, say Grisham for example, who go under contract to produce, the later novels are often not as good, staff involved, that sort of thing. I should be so unfortunate.

The other thing is, especially for self publishers, get a professional edit. I’ve read a few novels where the editing of some otherwise interesting books was so bad that it detracted and even led to bad reader reviews. I had to proofread my legal staff and thought I was pretty sharp. I had my wife, who taught writing, edit my novel . I had people I knew edit for mistakes and content, and still my publisher’s editor found a bunch of missed things, especially some missing words (I do that all the time even on the BY, the mind and hand are not always in cynic) and grammar and punctuation. I used spell check, never autocorrect or grammar check. Would constantly trying to change dialogue. People and fictional characters don’t worry about grammar in conversation.

I might be getting the bug to finish my quarter written novel. I think this post is novella length.
 
cohenzone said:
I have three sons. All really good writers. And have to write for work The two eldest read a lot as kids. I think it helps writing One is a college prof and a natural creative writer but now does scientific papers. The second is a corporate lawyer and also a natural creative writer but now writes exclusively lawyer stuff. My youngest hardly read and is a natural creative writer and is a producer, director, writer of TV shows. My wife and I could never understand where his writing came from because he read so little. I could always write, but not exactly for a living. My day job was as a Fed lawyer. It required a fair bit of writing, but I would say it was maybe a quarter of my time tops. I could never believe how some of the material I read from people who graduated law school could be so poorly written.

For novel writing, I believe, at least for me, the first books have to be written. They are stories you want to tell. I think for some of the very popular writers, say Grisham for example, who go under contract to produce, the later novels are often not as good, staff involved, that sort of thing. I should be so unfortunate.

The other thing is, especially for self publishers, get a professional edit. I’ve read a few novels where the editing of some otherwise interesting books was so bad that it detracted and even led to bad reader reviews. I had to proofread my legal staff and thought I was pretty sharp. I had my wife, who taught writing, edit my novel . I had people I knew edit for mistakes and content, and still my publisher’s editor found a bunch of missed things, especially some missing words (I do that all the time even on the BY, the mind and hand are not always in cynic) and grammar and punctuation. I used spell check, never autocorrect or grammar check. Would constantly trying to change dialogue. People and fictional characters don’t worry about grammar in conversation.

I might be getting the bug to finish my quarter written novel. I think this post is novella length.
Expand ...
"always in cynic"
 
borninansonia said:
I wrote two technical books on feeding balanced fresh food diets to dogs. My second book, Unlocking the Canine Ancestral Diet, is used at several veterinary schools in Europe and Asia.
Expand ...

Just found out my dog has EDS. Any diet recommendations?
 
.-.
FatHank said:
Yeah, right, wd don't believe you. Pictures or it didn't happen.
Expand ...

Tim won’t let me post videos. Something about the sponsors. It’s called “Recruiting Hard!”! It was part of the Grind and was over 20 minutes. But take it with a grain of salt. .
 
borninansonia said:
I'm envious of those who can write well, and can tell a story, whether fiction or non-fiction. There are many of you on the boneyard.

I am the worst writer I know who makes money writing.
Expand ...
Dog owners aren't looking for a thesis.
They are looking for an antithesis to canine digestive problems.
 
.-.
cohenzone said:
Meant to add. I said I need an editor. You’re hired.
Expand ...
Always in need of editing!

And my Master's Thesis // project // whatever is used in a writing course at my alma mater (not UConn) because well, it's cheap (free!). Not sure if the instructor is using it as an example of "do this, don't do that" or if it all just "don't do that." The school notified me it was being used and I read it again. It was almost legible and did not appear to be written by a lunatic in the depths of an ether binge - kudos to my editor!!
 
I've written several non-fiction books on contract for organizations in the fishing how-to field. None of those organizations is still in business, as the mass market in my field has evolved to video and online. The last one I wrote was the 2nd best selling title among the more than 100 books its publisher had put out. Fortunately for me, not too long after writing it, the publisher changed their rules for contract authors, and allowed us to buy copies at an attractive price for resale. Over the course of 5 years or so, I more than tripled what I'd made on the original contract. When they were liquidating, I bought back the rights to that book from them for a song. (really, a token amount). I sat on it for nearly a decade, and now I'm rewriting and updating it, and much of the material will be included in a new, more comprehensive book. My prospective publisher had hoped to have a completed manuscript this fall, and I had all intentions of devoting my recovery period following surgery to rewriting the existing book. Unfortunately, my ambition level during recovery was pretty much non-existent. I didn't even start to make any post-surgical headway on the project until two weeks ago.

I need to finish this one, because I have a work of fiction in my brain that desperately wants out.
 
my Kiddie Lit play about the personification of soiled laundry was selected and presented to the class
 
Fishy said:
@upstater wrote one a billion years ago.
Expand ...

Haha, yes. I've written a few more actually. But more into short stories now.

What is one of my plots? I try to write the most outlandish plots I can so I can ignore them and focus on what I care about. For instance, an alien (who travels the universe through sound waves) abducts a woman and transports her back to his planet because he likes her voice. That's how it ends anyway.

I was asked to write about Buffalo in a short story, so I wrote a comic detective story about a guy down the street who has been blowing bubbles out his 3rd story window (he uses a fan). He's been doing it for over 25 years. In the story he ends up dead. Some people around town told me they were not happy I did that. He was still blowing bubbles this morning.
 
Last edited:
Sibeerian said:
Publishing is tough, fickle, painfully slow and always chasing trends... and sadly good reviews are no guarantee that you'll get another book published. Stay inspired and keep at it.
Expand ...

Oh so much of this is so true. For 5 years I was one of 5 judges for a $100k fiction prize, and the novels were all not yet released. Inevitably, each year, the books would arrive and I'd see half of them would have the exact same theme. Religious novels one year. Trailer park novels another year. I'd sometimes get rejections that would read, "Caribbean novels are really popular this year..." Wish I'd known 3 years ago when I started this!

I have a friend whose first novel was fought over during a span of 2 days after mailing by editors at 6 different major houses, only to see all 6 houses reject the novel after the marketing team nixed it (marketers have more power than editors). She ended up publishing the book with a smaller house, McSweeney's. I'm always amused at these stories.
 
upstater said:
Haha, yes. I've written a few more actually. But more into short stories now.

What is one of my plots? I try to write the most outlandish plots I can so I can ignore them and focus on what I care about. For instance, an alien (who travels the universe through sound waves) abducts a woman and transports her back to his planet because he likes her voice. That's how it ends anyway.

I was asked to write about Buffalo in a short story, so I wrote a comic detective story about a guy down the street who has been blowing bubbles out his 3rd story window (he uses a fan). He's been doing it for over 25 years. In the story he ends up dead. Some people around town told me they were not happy I did that. He was still blowing bubbles this morning.
Expand ...

Hmm, focus on what I care about? Abducting women and guy ends up dead.

You might want to focus on other things upstater!
 
.-.
You must log in or register to reply here.

Forum statistics

Threads
168,540
Messages
4,581,502
Members
10,491
Latest member
7774Forever


Top Bottom