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Author Spotlight

Love of the Craft with David Duggins

Author, Publisher, Creativity Coach, and Writing Mentor

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Dave Duggins is an experienced, professionally published short story author. He's a writer, like you — in the trenches, bashing out pages, living and working as you do. He's the editor behind the colorful and melodramatic covers of Spacesuits and Sixguns, a contemporary pulp fiction magazine. And he's rounded out a 20-year career in the US Air Force, where he's spent the past 15 years learning effective mentoring and leadership techniques as only the military can teach them.

Nowadays Dave balances freelance work with a full-time job as a technical writer for a software company and blogs at www.daveduggins.com, where you'll find plenty of writing encouragement and advice.

To this unique blend of practical skills add enthusiasm, a nurturing mentality, love of the craft, respect and admiration for its practitioners in all their many guises, and unrelenting positivity. All that's missing from the equation is you.

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Interview with David Duggins

Dave Duggins discusses his roles as a writing coach, CEO of Voidgunner Press and the publisher and editor of an online magazine, along with the challenges and rewards of wearing these many creative hats.

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Dave's Top 10 Writing Books

Recommended writing resources to help you learn the rules, explore genre writing, express creativity, and publish your work.

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Listen Closely, the Answers are Already Inside of You

I was raised with the idea that you have to work hard to get what you want. You have to struggle.

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Dealing with Critical Blockheads

How do you ignore critical people and not let them discourage you into not doing anything creative?

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Making a Living as a Computer Software Game Artist

Interview with Daniel Dociu of ArenaNet on the creative process and making a living as an artist.

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Fear: Taking Command of the Greatest Power in Your Life

What to do with the fears surrounding your writing life.

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How to Find Work as a Ghostwriter

Listen in on the advice of three ghostwriting experts. Learn about this severely misunderstood profession which conjures up images of minimally talented hacks slaving away under sweatshop conditions, turning out book after spiritless book.

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'I Give Up Writing. I Quit.'

First: give up now and you'll give up for the rest of your life. You're teaching yourself to fail.

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Why Learn 'the Rules' of the Writing Craft?

If you learn the rules of the writing craft, then you'll know how to effectively break them. Pay attention to what the rules are for, and who teaches them to you.

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How to Make Projects Work: Methods, Medium, Mindset

Uncompleted projects are not failure. They are an opportunity for reflection, increased understanding and positive change.

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Looking at Your Preferences and Passions

A quick two-step exercise you can use to take a conscious look at your preferences and passions.

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Publishers Who Will Republish Books

And useful information about print on demand (POD) publishing.

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Revealing Intimate Details about Your Life

No other profession leaves you as vulnerable as writing.

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Selling Short Fiction — Is it Easy?

If my writing experience could be summed up in one phrase, it's this: publishing is not the be-all, end-all of your entire existence.

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On Starting ... Shall We Begin?

it seems appropriate that I write about beginnings — the blank page, and the first words that grace it; the blank canvas, and the first tentative sketches; the block of stone before the first stroke of the chisel.

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Start Write Now!

It's never too early to start your writing career even if you don't know anything about book writing or publishing.

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What is the best starting point in the first stages of writing?

I LOVE to write, but find that I start things and never finish.

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You and the Page

There is no fame when you're in your writing space bashing out a thousand words a day. Still, do what you love and the money will come.

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