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Trails for Rabbits and Writers. And Rabbits.
Struggling with your current work in progress? Good for you. I mean, it’s lovely and wonderful and all when the story just flows like gravy over the Spoon Ridge Mountains of your mashed potatoes, but if you ask me, struggle is a good thing. You’re somewhere in the middle of your book, aren’t you. And you’re totally frustrated. And ready to quit. Actually, yes, I am psychic. You’re also not eating enough vegetables and you need to call your mother and the world is going to end in 2012. But before you grab and drop your messterpiece in the virtual trash, read the rest of this blog post. Your novel…
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7 Writing Myths I Just Made Up So I Could Debunk Them
Yes, there are lots of actual writing and publishing myths out there worthy of review. But everyone else writes about those. Surely you’ve stumbled across a post or two debunking such common myths as “literary agents are out to kill your writing dreams” and “first-time novelists don’t have a chance in hell of getting published.” You don’t need yet another post about those myths, do you? No, you don’t. What you do need is this post in which I make up some writing and publishing myths of my own. Just so I can debunk them. Isn’t this more fun anyway? Oh, and I might have tried to stuff some actual…
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Writing Advice You Should Definitely Ignore
The title of this post is not some clever reverse psychology trick. You really shouldn’t listen to this advice. It’s bad for you and it goes against everything you’ve ever heard from all those lovely and wise literary agents out there. The Chips and Nathans and Janets and the rest. (I’m not being sarcastic here. All the agents I’m thinking of are completely lovely and incredibly competent and smell like cupcakes.) So why am I writing this post? Because sometimes advice that’s perfect for The Many is perfectly wrong for The Few. I’m not saying it’s bad to be among The Many. It’s actually a great place to be as…
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From the Office of Admissions
Let’s not call them confessions, okay? Because that reeks of guilt. And for many of the following, I feel no guilt whatsoever. I admit… I am immediately turned off by best-selling books because I hold fast to an erroneous belief that for something to be popular, it must cater to the lowest common denominator and I prefer to believe I am far above that line. I am not above that line. I pick up a book based on its cover and only rule out a possible purchase if the blurb on the back bores me to tears. Otherwise, I’ll buy it and give the author every opportunity to surprise me.…
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Some Books on Writing That Don’t Really Exist
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10 Reasons I Don’t Want to Be a Bestselling Author
1. I’ll have to purchase a whole new wardrobe from somewhere other than Wal-Mart so people don’t accuse me of wearing my false modesty like a neon sign. 2. Jerry Bruckheimer will want to add explosions to the movie adaptation of my bittersweet love story. 3. I’ll be the guest who gets bumped from Letterman when his lovefest interview with Julia Roberts runs long. 4. Struggling authors will hold quarterly “Hate Stephen Parolini” days to coincide with the receipt of their royalty statements. 5. An interviewer will ask me questions like “Did you know you had written a bestseller?” and “What’s your secret to writing a bestseller?” over and over…
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7 Excuses for Not Writing
It’s still Sunday in my world. What day is it where you are? And what’s the future like? Do we all have jetpacks yet? While I continue to be consumed by my editing work, I thought I’d give you seven excuses for not writing. Because, as we all know, these excuses play a key role in our efforts to cut our dreams off at the feet. Without them, we’d be writing all the time and getting better at it and paving the way for a successful future as published authors. And we wouldn’t want that, now, would we? You might want to bookmark this page so it’s readily available should…