Featuring Jane Porter
Last night I was on a flight from San Jose to Seattle, and the man next to me was one of the founding fathers of Microsoft. I didn’t know what he did when we started talking, so we talked books. He loves to read, and when I mentioned that I was an author and that I wrote commercial fiction for women he asked, “Like Danielle Steele?” I said no, that mine was different, more contemporary with themes relevant to today’s woman. “Like Anita Shreve, then?” he tried.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
Think about your birthday. Did you say June Fourth? April Seventeenth? September Third? We talk about the days of the months in the order in which they occur: the first, second, etc. (That’s why they’re called ordinal numbers.) Consequently, when you write a date, do not put those little th, rd, st indicators if the name of the month is stated first. For example, it’s June 4, not June 4th. People will automatically say June Fourth. There is no need for that little embellishment. Use it when the number stands alone: He was born on the 4th of June.
Read Moreby James Thayer
Writing dialogue should be easy, shouldn’t it? In our lives we talk all day and we listen all day. Friends, family, co-workers, the radio. Blah, blah, blah, an endless torrent of conversation, so it figures we should instinctively know how to write dialogue in our fiction. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Wait. Good dialogue isn’t just talk. It isn’t a transcript. Compelling conversations in fiction have little to do with real-life chat. Here are common mistakes made when writing dialogue.
Read Moreby Jane Porter
I’m in my own special writing place, a place that is hellish and yet oddly comfortable as I seem to spend lots of time here, wondering what I’m writing, wondering where this is going, wondering how I can possibly pull yet another rabbit out of the hat--an even harder feat when you’ve got no hat. (Or plot. Or likeable characters).
My preferred method of writing is to work in a feverish flush of imagination and determination. I used to get lost in my stories, used to be consumed by the passion, and the words flowed.
Read Moreby Brian Mercer
Anyone who's queried an agent or an editor has likely experienced it. You're walking out to your mailbox, anticipating a package, a magazine, perhaps the occasional, cherished letter, and there it is: That familiar white rectangle; your self-addressed stamped envelope--your little carrier pigeon has come home. And while it can be the bearer of good news, dreams fulfilled, even continued hope if the agent/editor shows interest, what's most likely sitting in that harmless looking envelope is the dreaded rejection letter.
Read Moreby Bill Kenower
Once upon a time, long before Author, I was a wine steward—or a sommelier, if you’re feeling snooty. It was during this period that I came to fully understand the difference between what I think of as real hands-on, experiential knowledge, and that other shallower, text book version. It’s all very well and good to get your issue of Wine Spectator every month and read up on what why California chardonnay isn’t as hot as it used to be, but quite another to have to recommend a good zinfandel to six Japanese businessmen on a hectic Saturday night.
Read Moreby Bill Kenower
Until recently, I had never liked the idea that you’ve got to do “whatever it takes” to get where you want to go. I was profoundly suspicious of the “whatever” part of this maxim, especially as it applied to those in the arts. It suggested that life was too short and too lean for anyone to hang onto anything as encumbering as ideals. Reality, this notion seemed to say, required steep compromise, constant sacrifice, and an overall willingness to go where you would have otherwise thought undesirable.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
Authors often ask me this question. Then they ask, “Wait, what exactly is the difference between the marketing and publicity departments?” Let’s start by answering that question. And for the sake of total honesty: half of the time, I don’t know myself. All I know is that the publicists dress better. I am completely joking (I am not at all).
OK, so brass tacks: marketing encompasses paid media, advertising, mailings, websites, blogs, attending conferences, expensive in-store displays, flyers, high-end magnets (more on that later), pencils with the book title, and your ’88 Honda with the cover illustration painted on the hood.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
This came from a reader, and it is a punctuation problem that troubles many:
Can you address the whole quotation and where the punctuation goes? It’s so counterintuitive to me to put the comma within the quotes in a sentence like this:
I was reading a story, “The Lottery,” when my sister burst into my room.
by Donna Alward
I started to think about this a lot when someone posed the question on their E-harlequin.com blog. When do you know you’re an author?
Webster’s dictionary defines an author as a “writer of a literary work (as a book).” According to this definition, one needn’t sell that work to be considered an author. You only have to write it. There you go…validation straight from Mr. Webster himself.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
Recently I was teaching a writing workshop at an elementary school for their Writers In Residency program. Part of the opportunity was to work with kindergarteners. One day, I sat with one of the classes and we started making up a story. I asked them to pick an animal as a main character. The group agreed upon a horse. I asked them where the horse was going. They said: a farm. I asked them what the horse was doing. They said: eating. I asked them what the horse was eating. And one little girl, filled with enthusiasm, shouted out, “The horse ate an alligator!” There was laughter from the other children, and then another little girl suggested that the alligator idea was incorrect.
Read Moreby Paula Margulies
Many authors are leery of doing book tours, not only because it's expensive to travel across the country, but also because it's difficult to create a good-sized audience. How can a relatively unknown writer hope to guarantee crowds at signings? Here are some suggestions to help put listeners in the chairs (and hopefully ring up sales):
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
There was a window when people were taught to leave out that comma before the and when there are more than three words in a row. We have too many commas, they said. You can leave those out. However, the serial comma has made its way back into the realm of importance, especially for writers, so the reader doesn’t get to determine what you meant.
Read Moreby Katherine Pryor
This all started over a power lunch a few months ago. Sitting across a linen-draped table from the owner and editor of a Seattle publishing company, I found myself trying to pin down the target market for my two unpublished novels.
“Well, they’re contemporary women’s fiction….Except this last one, which guys would probably like, too….People who like books? Yeah, that’s my target market,” I stammered.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
All authors need agents. Period. There, I said it. I won’t take it back, and you can’t make me. I’m sure there are a few of you reading this who think they’ll do just fine without one of those 15% grabbers, so I’ve put together a short quiz. If you answer “yes” to even one of these questions, you’re absolutely right: you do not need an agent. So stop reading because your book is certainly already published.
Read Moreby Allen Cox
Have you ever sent a query letter proposing an article to a magazine or newspaper editor, and waited for a response, and waited, and waited? A month passes, then two. Ever wonder why a response never came?
If so, try to step into the skin of the editor who opened and read your e-mail after opening a dozen other e-mails that day, all of them queries from writers whose work she doesn't know. And only one of those queries grabbed her attention.
Read Moreby Pam Binder
My path to being a published author of four novels with Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, and a novella in a New York Times Bestselling anthology, took a lot of twists and turns along the way.
Writers are told the chances of being published are about the same as winning the lottery. After all, these people say, no one is reading anymore, the editors in New York will only read agented manuscripts, they continue, and agents are easier to get than an editor.
Read Moreby Kevin Lauderdale
After decades of trying I’ve sold four short stories in three years to professional venues, and so far this year I’ve sold two. So, while I am now someone from whom an unpublished writer might be willing to take advice, I’m still close enough to having no credits to list on my cover letter that I remember what it’s like.
The Question is, How Do I Become A Writer? And The Answer (indeed, the only answer) is, You Write. Seems simple. Almost flippant. And yet you would be surprised at how many people are unwilling to take even that first step.
Read Moreby Allen Cox
Veteran travel journalist Judie Fein once told me that a new writer must never worry about the pay. "Just get some published clips," she said. "Begin to build a portfolio of the best travel writing you can do and the pay will come in time."
When Judie gave me that advice I was in the Yucatan attending her travel writing workshop, and was paying out-of-pocket for my airline ticket, hotel, meals, entrance fees, cab fare (and the list goes on), all the while calculating how many dozens of articles I'd have to sell to recoup the cost of the trip.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
Recently I was listening to a radio program in which Marc Allen was being interviewed. Marc Allen is one of the founders of New World Library–a very successful publishing house—and has written a book entitled Type- Z Guide to Success: A Lazy Person's Manifesto to Wealth and Fulfillment. On the show he talked about how years ago, when he had just turned thirty and was unemployed with no money, he decided to do an exercise he had heard of called “Ideal Scene.” In “Ideal Scene” you write down the best life scenario (or where you’d like to be in five years) you can imagine for yourself.
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