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Vivisection
If you watch a writer in a coffee shop, you won’t be particularly impressed by her work. You might not even notice that she’s working. The external act of writing is a mundane thing. It is quiet, often deathly so. ten fingers tapping long sighs and silent swearing insomnia cure You have to slice a writer in half to reveal the invisible truth. Writing is sudden bursts of brilliance racing ahead with yellow-jersey speed while you labor to catch up with tricycle typing fingers. It’s a magnificent ache and pointless pursuit sandwich smothered in what-the-hell-was-I-thinking sauce. It’s creation and destruction. Hope and despair. Love and love and more love. And…
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DON’T PANIC
Writing fiction can make you crazy. Here’s how. Step One – Over the course of your next three lifetimes, visit a few thousand publishing-related blogs and read every nugget of writerly wisdom you can find. Pay particular attention to literary agents’ blogs. They’re jam-packed with practical tips, such as: “If your novel includes a prologue, you’re obviously a demon from the pit of hell. I don’t represent demons. At this time.” “Don’t even think of misspelling the word query. Seriously, stop thinking about it. Have you stopped thinking about it? I didn’t think so. Please go away.” “Backstory in a novel is like back hair on a competitive swimmer. It…
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Summoning the Muse
A muse is a lot like that friend you had back in junior high. You know the one. She wore stripes and polka dots and plaid simultaneously and welcomed open-mouthed stares as obvious evidence of jealousy. She yelled “penis” at lunch, causing you to snort milk out your nose. She taught you the real value of compound words: more colorful swearing. She introduced you to punk music, country line dancing and cloudbursting – all on the same day. She smoked cigarettes, but only when doing so might get you in trouble. She was the friend your parents gave polite smiles to, but weren’t so sure about. And she was totally…
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Totally Believable Publishing Predictions for 2011
My predictions are based on extensive eavesdropping at my local Starbucks. Additional data supplied by that one night when I might have accidentally taken too much cough medicine before bed. 1. Barnes & Noble and Borders will merge after all and call their new stores “Noble Borders.” This will result in the closing of nearly half of existing stores, leaving thousands of bookish employees out of work. In an unrelated story, there will be a significant rise in the literary quality of panhandlers’ signs. 2. Amazon will release a Kindle Reader app for Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, Casio digital watches and the Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus…
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21 Excuses for Why Your Novel Isn’t Finished Yet
Yes, it’s a list-based post. If you prefer something more esoteric, read this post instead. 1. My protagonist has locked himself in his room and won’t come out until I agree to give him a love interest who isn’t sleeping with his best friend. 2. This computer can’t read WordPerfect files. Okay, so it’s been a while since I last worked on my novel. Don’t judge. 3. My muse left me to go work for James Patterson. 4. It is finished, but I’m waiting until novels about glittery vampires are “in” again before submitting it to agents. 5. Is true art ever really finished? 6. The letter “e” doesn’t work…
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Dreaming Up and Writing Down
At this very moment, I’m sitting in a Borders bookstore cafe. I tell you this to give you context for the words that will follow. See, when I’m surrounded by books and people looking at books and people talking about looking at books, I find it difficult to stay focused. My thoughts wander, my words follow. Or my words wander and my thoughts follow. Sometimes my thoughts and words both wander and I lose myself in a… I can’t figure out if the tiles on the floor of this cafe are arranged in some kind of purposeful pattern or if the tile-placer just made it up on the fly. A…
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Things I’ve Said on Twitter
This is a totally lame excuse for a post. It’s just a bunch of stuff I’ve tweeted over the past couple of months. Some of you have already been subjected to this madness and would rather be pecked to death by a sparrow than read it again. This isn’t for you. This is for those of you who don’t tweet…or who were too distracted by tweets about Justin Bieber to notice mine. Many of these have something to do with writing. The rest have more to do with my personal psychoses. Feel free to offer your diagnosis in the comments. While you amuse yourselves with this, I’ll go write a…