Ask the Author: Scott C. Holstad
Answered Questions (6)
Scott C. Holstad
Hi Jon. Thanks! Basically, I'm thinking of 2 options, either of which you're welcome to consider and go with or decide not to. 1) If you're in the US, I could mail you a copy of my brand new book of poems, Surviving Immortality Again, if you'd provide a rating/basic review for here on Goodreads (or any additional sites one wanted to add like Amazon), or 2) I don't have many copies of most of my old books but I do have some of my small full length collection Places and one of my chapbooks for the same arrangement, ie., rating/reviews here.
If either of these are of interest, maybe you could let me know both here and via email at scott @ hankrules2011 dot com because I get a lot of correspondence and my health problems result in my missing some when I don't want or mean to so redundancy is designed to help avoid that. Thanks again and have a good one.
-- Scott H
If either of these are of interest, maybe you could let me know both here and via email at scott @ hankrules2011 dot com because I get a lot of correspondence and my health problems result in my missing some when I don't want or mean to so redundancy is designed to help avoid that. Thanks again and have a good one.
-- Scott H
Scott C. Holstad
I'm alive & happy it's just a temporary existence. Yet billions believe in immortality, one of the most horrific concepts I can think of & because of bizarre incidents too numerous to describe, I worry I may actually be immortal (which I don't even believe in!) & it's not any destination like heaven, hell, etc., but it's simply living FOREVER that makes up my personal horror story.
Scott C. Holstad
One of several possible interesting mystery plots, I think, would be my story of moving thousands of miles from home, winding up living in my car homeless and broke, yet six months later was doing so well that I was having regular meanl and drinks, etc., at elite country clubs with people like owners of professional NBA, MLB, NHL and NFL teams, as well as major well known artists, state governors, etc. Looking back, it really seems surreal, but life can be unpredictably interesting and this is one of those periods where one can go from the bottom to the top as if in a movie.
Scott C. Holstad
READ!!! Study. Do your darn due diligence. In "the old days," if you wanted to be a (successful) writer, you had to know not only what HAD been published, but what WAS being published at the time, as in what are editors and publishers looking for now? I read thousands of books, hundreds of journals and magazines, subscribed to god knows how many, and of course wrote for hours every day of the year for decades. But I also wouldn't send my submissions off to a publication unless I had a pretty good grasp on what kind of stuff they tended to accept, who they published, their preferred styles, etc., because if you're going to send sonnets to many magazines, you've just wasted everyone's time and your money while conversely, if you write conversational, populist poetry, there's little bother in submitting it to journals like Ploughshares, the New Yorker, Poetry, etc. Same too with other types of writing and publications. Don't show you're an amateur by now knowing your field or your craft. Unless you're one of the current ocean of digital self publishers who have never heard of proofing and would never bother hiring a proofer or editor, in which case they look and read like dumbasses, even if they write a decent tale. And that's not just my opinion. Read the reader reviews of most self published digital books and the ONE universal primary complaint is the typos, bad grammar, unprofessionalism, how the book was good but could have been better with editing, etc. Here's my personal snobbery. Up until this century, over the past century, most writers -- successful or not -- had to "pay their dues." They had to write and submit, in some cases for many years, try to find agents, try to find publishers, try to get out of slush piles, put up with rejection, be patient and persistent, and if lucky and deserving, some would finally get some type of book published, etc. Ideally, professionally proofed and edited. However, with the advent of digital self publishing, everyone thinks they're a freaking writer (there's a difference between being a "writer" and being an "author" -- anyone can pay to be an author...), and basic grammatical and publishing standards have plummeted and while some don't care, many do and many feel -- myself included -- that if you self publish something that looks horrible, even if it's otherwise good, you look like a moron. And I get further annoyed with all of the non-native English speakers publishing Kindle books in English. I have nothing against speakers of other languages. I taught ESL to students from dozens of countries with dozens of languages and have nothing but respect for them. But if you're Russian (to use a book I recently quit reading because I literally couldn't understand the content due to lack of standards such as articles, etc.) or another language speaker and you're trying to publish a book in English, if your English isn't darn good, HIRE AN EDITOR!!! Don't trade your alleged expertise by looking and sounding stupid! It's self defeating. More people writing today need to think intelligently and strategically and most don't and don't know they should. And it reflects on their sales/success/etc. Feel free to hate me and call me a snob, but I dare you to find anyone in PEN or the Authors Guild who disagrees with me. People today are too lazy or impatient to pay their dues and they publish crap. And that's sad...
Scott C. Holstad
I wrote daily, two to three hours a day, for over 15 consecutive years and never experienced writer's block. I was insanely prolific. Then, after all that time, it hit me -- writer's block! I panicked. Never experienced it in my life. I struggled to overcome it for quite some time and as a former writing professor, had actually taught many classes and seminars on writing prompts, tips, techniques, etc. Thus, it was ironic when my own advice did little to help me. Ultimately, though, I turned to the standard advice -- just write. Since I couldn't seem to write books, I started several blogs, wrote thousands of blog posts, wrote thousands of book reviews, wrote a variety of shorter pieces on a wide range of topics for various mediums and venues, and while I haven't put out a book in awhile -- and have actually turned several contracts offered me for new books -- I feel good about branching out into other areas and finding new audiences. It's been interesting to see my "creative" writing slowly morph into more technical, nonfiction, political analysis and scientific areas and I've enjoyed continually expanding my range of interests and capabilities, so by forcing myself to initially write regular blog posts on multiple blogs, and to write hundreds of book reviews for myself and for others, and to then branch out into writing short and longer articles on a wide range of subjects, I've overcome my writer's block while forcing myself to adjust to no longer publishing books but instead writing about many topics for small and large audiences utilizing different styles, methods and constructs.
Scott C. Holstad
Terry Pratchett's Discworld, because it's the best, most wonderfully unique world I can recall having been created and because I have long wanted to meet so many characters who inhabit that world.
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