One Honest Indie

“Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” ― Seth Godin, Poke the Box

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A Word for the ‘Aspiring Writer’

08/05/2025 by Debbi

Isn’t writing pretty? 🙂

Okay. Wonder what the writer’s life is like? This is what it’s like. I just got through writing, um, how many words did I write? Let me just check. Oh, I didn’t even know. I’m barely aware of my word count these days, but I write every single day. Where the hell did I start? Wait. Nope. Not there. Nope. Not there. Not there. Not there. Okay. It was there, right? Okay. It was right here. Actually. I changed that. Yeah. Okay, so let me see. Come up with that word count.

Forget it. It doesn’t matter. What matters is I ran across a situation where I wrote the word “gobsmacked” and I thought, okay, would a 30-year-old woman in the year 2022, which is when this is taking place, use the word gobsmacked? So I had to Google it or whatever you want to call it, and came up with gobsmacked: “The British Slang Gobsmacked: A Closer Look.”

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To Substack or Not

06/17/2025 by Debbi

Remember this? 🙂

Hi. Yeah, I’m on Substack and apparently every Substacker’s favorite topic is Substack itself. Is it really? It’s not really my favorite topic, but I’ll take a look at this article and think about that. There are a lot of names mentioned here. A lot of people are on Substack. A lot of people seem to be making money there. I’m not one of them. I mean, I make a little bit of money, but it’s very, very small.

Now, raise your hand if like me, your email is inundated with more newsletters than you have time in the day to read. Since you’re reading this newsletter, I’m guessing many of these missives are coming courtesy of Substack, the 8-year-old publishing platform that’s seen explosive growth since the presidential election last year.

Most interesting.

Well, I have to tell you, I’m not inundated with newsletters that I have no time to read because when I don’t read them, I unsubscribe. Or these days I avoid subscribing entirely because I have no time to read them. I do have time to talk about it though. I think what we’re heading toward is a situation in which there’s going to be too much of everything and not enough behind it to merit the payment. And I am just a little bit worried about that myself. So these are things that bother me quite a bit in reading stuff like this. I mean, we have big names coming onto this platform and people feel threatened or something because they’re not making the leaderboard.

 


Making the leaderboard sometimes is not as awesome as you think it is. Sometimes it just does not last. I know in my case with Amazon, it did not last. So all of this obsession over numbers and where you end up on a leaderboard, I don’t know how much we really benefit by obsessing over these things. I’m thinking we don’t benefit much at all, that we’re better off trying to find a way to reach people without obsessing about these numbers. So I don’t know, but I, I’m trying to get at that a little bit with what I’m saying here. Maybe we need to just kind of relax and not worry so much about this stuff. That’s just my thought, thought for the day.

At some point I reached a point where I was burnt out and I just had to just relax and just not worry so much. So that’s what I have to say about that. And I hope that you’re having a good day, wherever you are, whoever you are, and whatever you’re doing, I’ll go back to exercising. I should have been exercising this whole time and I haven’t been. There, you see. Helps with the dystonia.

Okay? So I’ll be seeing you! Take care and yes, I’m in my Colonel Kurtz mode here, or whatever his name was who went after Colonel Kurtz. Half in shadow. The horror, the horror of the internet. Take care, be seeing you.

PS: It was Captain Willard played by the amazing Martin Sheen! 🙂

Want to subscribe to my Substack? 🙂 For free?

PPS: Takes a while to get geared up, doesn’t it? 

 

Ideas for Community Benefits

12/03/2024 by Debbi

Image by Henning Westerkamp from Pixabay

Hey everyone. I just wanted to talk a little bit about some of my ideas for the community that I would like to form. Of course, you have your usual kind of things, benefits like group coaching. I was thinking about doing mastermind sessions. It’s a different sort of concept maybe than you’re used to, but it’s something I can talk about at some point. But I thought also being a member of something should also be fun.

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My Slightly Crappy Quarterly Update

03/26/2024 by Debbi

So, it’s already the end of March and what have I accomplished for this quarter?

I’ve reached Chapter 24 of my latest novel-in-progress.

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Meet Debbi

Welcome to my writers' corner of the Internet. I'm a novelist, who also writes short stories and screenplays. I hope to share the benefit of my experiences as an indie author with dystonia since 2009. I also post a lot of book reviews, because I love to read and learn new things. I hope to share that knowledge with you.

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Beginner’s Guide to Mystery Writing

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