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On the Subject of Subjectivity
Deep breath… The Da Vinci Code is the best novel ever written. You know it’s based on a true story, right? The Left Behind books are more well-written than anything by Fitzgerald or Hemingway or any of those boring Russian authors. The Road. It changed the way I view dialogue said the man. And punctuation. His life was a series of fragmented sentences. And so was the book. The Road is not just Cormac’s tarmac. It is brilliance said the man. The boy turned his head and coughed. Don’t you dare question the infinite incredibleness of The Lord of the Rings trilogy or a horde of orcs will pour out…
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More Friday Miscellany
Welcome to another weekend edition of Noveldoctor.com. Today? Five random things. Item the First – Tomorrow evening, the Christy Award ceremonies will be held in Denver. The Christy Awards are given to celebrate and promote the best of Christian fiction. A novel I edited, Safe at Home, by Richard Doster, is one of three nominees for best “First Novel.” I won’t be at the ceremony (I don’t have anything to wear and I sincerely mean that because I work out of my home and in my home I don’t maintain a dress code apart from “wear something when you go to Starbucks”), and so I won’t be able to practice…
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10 Reasons Writing Fiction Is the Best. Thing. Ever.
You can explain away talking to yourself as “trying out a conversation between characters in my novel.” Your much-used acronym for “work in progress” is alarmingly similar to the acronym for “rest in peace” and this adds an air of clever mystery to your role when casually mentioning it among non-writers. (Plus, you only have to change one letter to appropriately re-categorize any book that’s going nowhere.) You can overindulge in any of the three “C”s with impunity: Coffee, Chocolate, Cocktails. You can do your job almost anywhere. While still stuck in bed, or at your desk in a chair. You can write in a car, you can write in…
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Fiction Trends of the Future!
Yesterday I was in the future. Wait, I mean in the future, I zipped back to yesterday. Or was it tomorrow that I…never mind. It doesn’t matter. Bottom line is what’s important here and here’s the bottom line: I know what book trends are going to be hot in three years. Yes, you heard me. (Really? Did you just hear me right now? Like in an audible voice? Because that’s either the coolest thing ever or a sign that you should schedule an emergency appointment with your psychiatrist.) While I was in the future, I did a little historical research. All because I love each and every one of you…
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All Novels Are Love Stories (But This Post Isn’t)
I think it’s Monday. Is it? I had these great plans to write a clever post about how every novel is essentially a love story in disguise, but those plans got derailed by Real Life. So instead, I’m just going to offer this bit of writing advice (I’ll get to the “love story” post another day): Sometimes you just don’t have anything to say. I don’t mean “sometimes you don’t have anything of value to say.” I mean sometimes you just don’t have anything at all to say. When these times come, it’s not about writer’s block – it’s about being empty. There are lots of reasons for this, most…
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The Law of Diminishing Returns
Last week, literary agent and dispenser of great publishing wisdom Nathan Bransford invited his savvy blog readers to answer the question, “How Do You Know When Your Novel is Really Finished?” (If you haven’t already studied the many and diverse responses, click here to see what writers had to say.) As I consider my own novel-in-progress (I prefer the abbrev. n.i.p. over w.i.p., is that so wrong?), I can imagine I’ll still be editing and re-writing when the Hilton Lunar Resort and Golf Course opens on the moon. (I won’t be able to afford an Earth-view room, but since I’ll be spending most of my time in the Moonbucks coffee…
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About Deadlines
It’s late Sunday night and my plan to write a week’s worth of posts has been foiled by the usual assortment of weekend activities plus the addition of a time-suck we in the freelance editing world call “gettin’ paid.” For a freelancer, deadlines are no respecter of nights and weekends. I might be able to steal another day or three if I really thought it necessary, but depending on how tightly the book is scheduled through the rest of the publishing process, doing so could put the release date in jeopardy. (Okay, that’s a worst-case scenario, but keep in mind that the author may have already pushed for an additional…