On Writing

Rocket yourself back into the past: Go WWOOFing to research your next historical novel! Table of contents:  Out-of-the-Box Solution   1             How It Works   2              Other sample experiences   5 Writing schedule:   14                     But . . .   14                      Other Organizations   15 by Christa Bedwin I have been  writer and editor for twenty years. (I now write time-travel magical realism adventures with my characters exploring various cool time periods and places in the past, mostly but not completely placed in Europe.) Even ten years ago I realized a big problem with the writing/editing career – too much time with the bum in the chair just isn’t healthy. An editing colleague died of an aneurysm at her desk, working on a late deadline, an...

Venice's beauty is unmistakeable. The white stone sidewalks, the sweeping arches. The mosaics. The age, the grace, the sheer heart-stopping beauty. But just as we scratch today's billionaires and discover underpaid laborers backing up their fortunes, if you scratch the surface of Renaissance Venice's beautiful buildings and start to follow the trail.... where did all that money come from, anyway? Slavery, mostly. The spoils of war, in other cases. Here are some interesting but terrible ways that people used each other in Renaissance Venice:  Aretino: One of the first writers to have most of his profits taken by his publishers! We all know how hard we work to write. Imagine doing all that and expecting money from it and not getting it (Aretino decided to find alternative forms of income by means of blackmail). Murano glass: The famed glassworkers of Murano are craftspeople who have passed the traditions down their family lines for centuries, and apprentice...