The Voice

by Jeff Ayers

It was during the height of my mid-life crisis that I heard the voice. Due to a departmental reorganization, I had just lost my dream job and went from being a supervisor to a clerk, pay cut and all. I was depressed and felt alienated at work, and my family and friends were both confused and alarmed.

Before the changes at my job, I had looked forward to my work at the library each day. Being a voracious reader had originally led me to a library career. I then began reviewing books for Library Journal and found that to be emotionally satisfying. Seeing my name in print as a reviewer was a thrill, but the dream of seeing my name on a book on the library shelves still beckoned. Even so, I ignored the call. But then my job nightmare began, and instead of asking my family for help, I turned them away. I didn’t drink or do drugs, but I began to understand how someone could fall into that trap. It was during a drive to my new, meaningless job that I broke down and started crying. Then I heard the voice. more...

Authors Need Authors

by Katherine Pryor

At last summer’s four-day PNWA writers’ conference, over 400 writers competed for the attention of about 30 agents and editors. Each room was a whirlpool of ambition that threatened to suck up every ounce of integrity around it. Agents were accosted in the hallways, bathrooms, and elevators. A conference is a writer’s chance to make a great impression, deliver the perfect pitch, and get the ultimate pay-off, those beautiful four little words: “Send me your stuff.”

A conference this size attracts a lot of hungry people eyeing what seems like a tiny pie. We have all heard the statistics: fewer publishing houses owned by fewer companies. Fewer readers, smaller markets. We invest that entry fee to work our way out of the slush pile, and into the coveted stack of “Requested Material.”

By Friday of the conference, I was a mess. I was terrified of my agent pitch, desperate for professional connections. My stomach ached, my nerves were raw. Tears threatened to spill when the agent I was pitching to took a cell phone call. more...

Top Six Novel Writing Mistakes

by James Thayer

I run a freelance editing service (www.thayerediting.com), and I teach novel writing at the University of Washington extension school.  Editing and teaching, I see six prospect-killing mistakes time and time again, errors so profound that once spotted an agent or editor will know there’s no point reading farther.

 1.   Beginning a scene too early, ending it too late:  Writers often begin the scene during uninteresting preliminary matters, instead of at the core of the scene.  And then the writers continue on after the crux of the scene has ended.

 Begin the scene as late as possible in the chronology, and end it as early as possible.  Here’s an example: a scene should begin not as the character gets out of the taxi, but five minutes later, after he has paid the cab driver, and after he has taken the elevator to the tenth floor, and after he has said hello to a lady carrying a shopping bag.  The scene should being when he opens the door to find the body.  The scene should end as the character picks up the telephone to call the police, not as he talks over the phone to the desk sergeant, not as he goes to the cabinet for a shot of whiskey to calm his nerves, not as he sits down on the chair near the sofa to wonder what it all means. more...