At my grandmother’s assisted-living center, residents line up their walkers in the hall when they go into the dining hall for a meal. When I went to visit this week, more than a dozen black roller-walkers were up against the wall, each personalized with nick-knacks hanging from the bars. I planned to take a day […]
Taking a hint from a few of my favorite blogs, I’ve decided to post a weekly round-up of online writing tips, publishing news and other useful links I’ve come across during last week. You can expect this every Friday. What have I got for you this week? Novelist Jane Kennedy Sutton describes A Writer’s Most […]
Added 10/09. Author’s note: Don’t use this to calculate page count for your own book! I was just learning when I posted this, and these number are off. “How long will your book be?” Dad asked one day as I updated him on my writing progress. “Uh, I dunno,” I replied. “It’ll be as long […]
I’m not exactly racking in the dough writing this book full time. Hopefully I’ll make a little cash when it’s finally published, but for now my annual income is, well, nada. This is the first time since graduate school that I don’t have a salary. For the last few years, I worked my dream job […]
Literary agent Rachelle Gardner: You’re reading my blog, aren’t you? Gardner blogged this week about the importance of not putting the cart before the horse. In other words, writers need to get their writing up to speed before worrying about the details of publishing. The post seemed like it was written for me. Until a […]
While browsing my @alexisgrant replies on Twitter recently, I noticed a message from a follower I didn’t even know I had: @jtlongandco, or JT Long, author of The Writer’s Secret: MasterMind Your Way to Publishing Success. “I love your blog,” she wrote. “It is like reality TV for writers.” “Guess I should consider adding more […]
I scared you for a second there, didn’t I? You thought I was — gasp! — moving out of my parents’ house! Don’t worry, I’m still the only 28-year-old you know who lives at home. But I did acquire an exciting piece of property today: a shiny new Dell laptop. I am convinced this is […]
I know what you’re thinking: It’s an oxymoron. Novels are fiction. But when it comes to narrative nonfiction, the genre of my book, labels aren’t that simple. My travel memoir tells a true story, but it’s meant to read like a novel. That means I’ve got to work elements of fiction into my book, including […]
Since several readers have commented on recent blog posts, asking how much of the manuscript I’ve written so far, I’ m here with answers. Of my 15 chapters, two are drafted in full. Drafts of another two chapters are more than half written. That doesn’t sound like much. But since I’m writing this book out […]
Maybe I’m going about this all backwards. During an Editor Unleashed live chat on Wednesday, literary agent Jessica Faust not only critiqued my query, she also made me reconsider my writing and publishing plan. I was under the impression that an agent and publisher would consider my book based on a quality proposal and sample […]