books -

24Feb 2015 by Dianna L. Gunn

Passion cannot sustain art

Writing

I've been planning to write this post for a while, but it became even more relevant to my life--and the lives of a few hundred other people--last week when my beloved publisher, Musa Publishing, announced that they are closing their doors. Despite publishing the highest quality books that earned four or five star ratings everywhere they went, over the last several months we've suffered from reduced sales. Combined with the rising costs of doing business, this has brought about the end of an incredible publishing house devoted to empowering authors. Musa truly was a publishing house like no other, and everyone involved is mourning its early demise. This is a common problem in arts-based businesses. With more and more free content available, more distractions, and a higher number of people struggling…

19Aug 2013 by Dianna L. Gunn

Focus in on what really matters

Blog Stuff, Novels, Short Fiction, Writing

As a writer with a limitless imagination and an interesting life, it's easy to get caught up in too many projects at once and to end up abandoning things you really want to work on. It's something I do all the time, and this summer I've done it yet again, and realized that I need to change course to truly create the future I want. When you know exactly what you want, it's tempting to try to force it all at once, but life doesn't work like that. You need to choose two or three projects to focus on at a time, no more. You might even want to try focusing on one project at a time depending on your schedule and the kind of person you are. I don't…

15Jul 2013 by Dianna L. Gunn

Passive Residual Income

Books, Freelance Writing, Writing

Last week I spent time hanging out with some of my friends. One of the guys there was raving about an energy drink he's currently working as a marketer for. He explained the whole system and was extremely gung-ho about it, convinced we should all give it a try and could become millionaires through the company's system. Some of these companies are legitimate and you can make tons of money, but there are plenty of scams out there too, just like in the publishing world. Still, I didn't say anything about that. What I did say was "thanks for the information, I'm too busy working on writing and editing my books". His response? "That's fair. Books are a great way of creating passive residual income." I didn't say anything, but…

06May 2013 by diannagunn

Three Hundred and Fifty… Two!

Blog Stuff

Today I was going to wrap up my series on disturbances in your writing, but then something very exciting happened: the number of people subscribed to Dianna's Writing Den reached three hundred and fifty. In fact, it reached three hundred and fifty-two. Usually I don't make a big deal of these markers, but three hundred and fifty seems like a really big deal. So today I'd like to say a few things about Dianna's Writing Den. The first is that I appreciate every single one of you, and that I'm thrilled to be forming such an amazing community of writers here at Dianna's Writing Den. I'm really proud of the work I do here and I'm glad to be helping all of you. I hope you'll stay with me on…

05Oct 2011 by diannagunn

What to do with Your Dear Diary Project

Journalling, Short Fiction, Workshops, Writing, Writing, Writing: The Process

Now that you've finished your Dear Diary Project, there are several things you can do with it. They range from hiding it in a corner in your basement to trying to turn it into something publishable. But before you do anything with the file or manuscript itself, you need to properly extract all the valuable information from it for later use. Extracting Information for your Dear Diary Project Now, I don't know about you, but my character profiles are pretty messy and I usually don't have much room left on the page by the time I've written a Dear Diary Project for that character. So I like to create a fact sheet, which is a simple list of facts about my character. Things like their favourite colour, what kinds of…

17Aug 2011 by diannagunn

Trying to be Healthier

Inspirational

My boyfriend, apart from being a wonderful guy, happens to be a mover. Sometimes his clients are also trying to get rid of things, because they won't fit or for whatever other reasons. One day somebody wanted to get rid of a huge box of books. My boyfriend wanted a couple of them, but he was told if he was going to take any of them, he had to take all of them. Imagine my excitement-like a kid in a candy store--when he came home with this big box of books. There were only a couple of titles that grabbed me on my first look through, but now that I've finished those, I've realized that quite a lot of them interest me. What does this have to do with getting…