There’s an analogy that’s been around for a long time – I’ve been using it myself for years – comparing writing a novel to a long-distance road trip, usually at night. The comparison goes, in the car, you can only see as far as the headlights light
Read more →scene: in a drama, a subdivision of an act or of a play not divided into acts….”scene” is also the name given to a “dramatic” method of narration that presents events at roughly the same pace as that at which they are supposed to be occurring, i.e.,
Read more →Recently, a fan came up to me, enthusiastically waving Thirteenth Child. “This book blew me away!” he said. “It breaks all the rules! How did you do that?” Naturally, I looked him straight in the eye and said, “What rules?” What most would-be-writers mean when they’re talking about
Read more →A couple of posts back, nct2 asked what Other Helpful Stuff a writer could do – besides writing, taking classes, or learning new skills – to improve their work. I blinked at that a couple of times, because my very first reaction was “Learn to touch-type,” and
Read more →OK, I had a whole long blog post ready to go about non-traditional publishing, and then I looked at it and realized that I was just saying the same thing again: there are scams, it is a ton of work, you have to educate yourself, check Writer
Read more →The book business has been changing radically every couple of years for the entire time I’ve been in it, but one thing does seem to remain constant: lots of people still want to break in and sell their novels, and a sizeable number of these folks either
Read more →I hadn’t planned on doing more about agents, but all this talk got me thinking. See, there’s a big difference between how the publishing industry (or anything, really, but I’m talking about publishing today) looks from the outside, compared to what it looks like from the inside.
Read more →So you have your FINISHED novel-length manuscript, and you’ve done some thinking about what you’d like your agent to do for you in addition to submissions, negotiations, and collecting from your publishers. Now it’s time to actually start looking for an agent. And the first thing you
Read more →So Julie D. asked: Could I put in a request for a post about finding the right agent as a first time author, and/or whether self-publishing electronically is a bad idea? It’s actually two questions, but I’m going to start with the question about agents. Actually, let’s
Read more →So the first draft of The Far West is done at last, turned in a bit over two weeks ago, and I’m past the first walking-around-in-a-daze bit where I spend all my time feeling as if I ought to be finishing the book and then remembering that
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