Sunsets & Semicolons - a Frank & Revealing Field Guide to the Writing Life From struggling as a beginning writer and learning everything he could squeeze out of books and articles on creativity, writing, and publishing, Greg Lilly stepped his way from technical writer to technology analyst to infrastructure architect of a major corporation then took a turn in his path to magazine editor, fiction author and small press publisher. The shift from the Information Technology world to a Writer's Life was a 40th birthday re-invention with some squeaks and bumps along the way. That perilous journey led Greg to develop and conduct several acclaimed workshops and seminars for aspiring writers. He shares his experiences and techniques - things that worked, not in academia or in New York City, but in the real world of freelancing and query letters and book signings. The kernel of this book came from requests of those workshop handouts and notes. "This is one writer's life," he says, "from creativity to craft, staring at sunsets to sweating over semicolons. This is my opinion, but certainly not the only one out there. These tips and suggestions have worked for me over time, and I hope they give you some guidance and sparks of insight." This is a field guide to navigating the Writer's Life. "This guide does not teach you how to write. It gives you tips for the trenches of writing: developing an idea so it makes it to the page; overcoming writer's block when the words don't flow; strengthening the pace of the manuscript so readers are breathless; and finally, how to sell your manuscript to a publisher - from an insider's viewpoint." Discover advice from testing an idea for a novel to perfecting a query letter that sells that novel to a publisher - in a frank and revealing Field Guide to the Writer's Life.