Tips for YA Writers
If you don’t know about YA Highway yet, you should definitely check it out.
And also, impromptu interviews to file away for fun and educational purposes:
If you don’t know about YA Highway yet, you should definitely check it out.
And also, impromptu interviews to file away for fun and educational purposes:
Details on the official Peter Straub Facebook page:
Win a signed copy of A DARK MATTER! Straub’s Madison, Wisconsin is a scary place, but every town has its secrets, right? Describe the scariest thing about your town here. The best entry as judged by the administrators will win a signed copy of A DARK MATTER. Contest ends midnight EST, 2/9/10.
Don’t post your descriptions here! Post ’em over there!
But if you’re wanting to comment here, tell us what you’re reading, what you like, and what you’re dyin’ to read next. I’d love to hear from you!
I’ve just finished reading an ARC of Connie Willis’ new book, Blackout. I’ll be posting a review tomorrow.
Lisa Abbate of Wordmountain.com has done a terrific interview about self-publishing with author-advocate and co-founder of Writer Beware, novelist Victoria Strauss. Ms. Strauss outlines some of the hows, whys, and best-practices writers should be aware of when they’re investigating self-publishing options, for Absolute Write’s readers.
Self-publishing is a perfectly viable model for a number of writers and a number of niches, but the various business models out there introduce a whole set of complications and dangers for any savvy writer to be aware of. In addition, it’s important that anyone planning to self-publish understands what they’re looking at, in terms of distribution and sales numbers:
Writer Beware often hears from authors who believe they’ve been scammed by self-publishing companies, when in reality it was their expectations that were the problem—they didn’t realize that the average self-pubbed book sells fewer than 200 copies, or that the wholesale distribution offered by most self-pub companies is only half the distribution picture.
Read the whole interview here!
Victoria Strauss is the author of seven fantasy novels for adults and young adults, including the Stone duology (The Arm of the Stone and The Garden of the Stone) and the Way of Arata duology (The Burning Land and The Awakened City). She has written hundreds of book reviews for magazines and ezines, including SF Site, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. In 2006, she served as a judge for the World Fantasy Awards. She maintains the popular Writer Beware website (www.writerbeware.com) and blog (www.accrispin.blogspot.com). She received the Service to SFWA Award in 2009. Her personal website is http://www.victoriastrauss.com/
Lisa Abbate is a nonfiction author’s coach, writer, and editor for many innovative technology companies. She’s been a longtime contributing writer at Absolute Write and editor at Coyote Wild. Her website is www.wordmountain.com. She is also the founder and executive director of an environmental organization, visionforsalem.org.
You can find more interviews with Victoria Strauss on these websites:
This is just to let you know that one of our advertisers, Pennwriters.com, has a very affordable online class for learning to write effective dialogue beginning February 1st.
The course instructor is writer Catherine McLean:
“Catherine McLean is a published author of science fiction, paranormal, and contemporary (romance) short stories. She has had more than two dozen articles published on the craft of writing. For more than ten years she’s given workshop for writers at conferences, college personal enrichment courses, and online writing courses.”
You can find out more about Ms. McLean at her Web site, WritersCheatSheets.com.
Lessons in French
I get to read a lot of interviews with writers, editors, publishers, and other assorted interesting people. This interview posted on Tartitude is very fun. Not just because award-winning NYT best-selling author Laura Kinsale has a new book out, but Hope101’s interview questions aren’t just the same old standards, either, and Ms. Kinsale’s answers have humor, heart, and a sense of fun that’s a joy to read.
Ms. Kinsale has more advice for writers in a Q&A posted today on Apprentice Writer, as well.
You can follow Hope101 on Twitter: @tartitude
You can follow Laura Kinsale on Twitter: @LauraKinsale
You can find Lessons in French
As empathy fatigue sets in and life presents challenges that are geographically closer to each of us, please let’s take a few moments to recall the perhaps hundreds of thousands dead, and even more still suffering.
And please let’s all spend the time and energy it takes to help, in whatever ways we possibly can. Because I do believe that we are charged to be our brother’s keeper, in pretty much any belief system or faith I’ve ever been exposed to.
A rather silly and inaccurate article from WSJ proclaiming The Death of the Slush Pile.
An excellent post on agent Janet Reid’s blog, Slush Works.
A discussion on the AW forums, that references both essays.
This stuff comes up every now and then. Every week it seems like some new Website goes up, announcing that they’ll revolutionize the publishing industry by collecting writers in one place for agents and editors to browse at their leisure; this is such a common meme that savvy writers simply call these sites YADS: Yet Another Display Site.
Every week it seems like some newspaper looking to fill column inches runs a scare piece about the death of the slush pile, all the ways publishing is doomed, the “revolution” in “indie” publishing or yet another ridiculous story about submitting a re-keyed manuscript version of Gone With the Wind, and—quelle surprise!—receiving form rejections from agents too canny to verbally engage with some wingnut who’s just submitted a re-keyed manuscript of Gone With the Wind…Then Twitter explodes with links to the original essay, writers despair, bloggers pontificate, and message-board threads proliferate on writer’s fora across the Web.
Read those pieces more closely. Too often, these articles are thinly-disguised, self-serving press-releases pretending to be articles. Remember a few things. Remember that there are some very key differences between fiction and nonfiction publishing. Remember that book-selling and publishing, while very closely related and interdependent, aren’t the same industry.
Most of all, remember that an article full of speculation full of doom and gloom and looming apocalypse is just more interesting reading than an essay that says, “Yep. Writing is a competitive and challenging aspiration. You’ll have to work your ass off, and you still may not make it. That hasn’t changed one little bit in centuries, so don’t look for it to change anytime soon.”
The best essay I’ve ever read about slush, by the way, is Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s Slushkiller. You should read it, if you haven’t. You should read the comments, too. And if you’ve already read it, you should probably read it again. Every writer I know actually finds it oddly encouraging.
Writer Robert B. Parker died this morning at his desk, apparently of a heart attack. He was 77.
I’ve loved his books for decades. I’ll miss his work, and his unique voice, very much.
Google and the Google Book Settlement might be one of the biggest concerns of the entire decade for published writers. Ursula K. LeGuin resigned from the Authors Guild, because of their capitulation.
So very much has been written about this wrangle and Google’s rather blatant attempt to completely revise copyright law, and I won’t try to recap it all, here. SFWA is hosting an online panel discussing the Google Book Settlement, and you’re invited.
The text-based panel will be held at 11 a.m. (EST) Jan. 21 and will run for 90 minutes on the SFWA discussion forums. The text will create an instant transcript for writers who cannot make the opening discussion. After the first 30 minutes of discussion, the floor will open for questions from the audience. The online discussion is open to the public, although anyone wishing to ask questions must register at the website. Visit the SFWA discussion forums at http://www.sfwa.org/online-google-settlement-panel/ to watch the panel and to register.
Here are some links to read, if you’re still feeling in the dark about all this, and how it might concern you and your book:
Wired article about the original proposed settlement
Some criticism of the revised version of the proposed settlement
One take on where things are now, and what objections remain
A petition to be presented to the Court, expressing the opinion of the undersigned authors
I’m generally a fan of Google. But I’m vehemently opposed to their proposed end run around all existing copyright law. They’ve apparently decided that, not only do “figs want to be free” but that they’re big enough to simply set up their own fruit stand with other people’s figs.
Just a reminder to those of you thinking about attending Backspace Writers Conference in May, you’ll get an early registration discount if you register before February 1.
(In the interests of full disclosure, Backspace does advertise with AbsoluteWrite on occasion, but this is not a paid post, and I’ve personally heard really excellent things about this conference.)
This is a terrific opportunity for agents and writers to find each other. From the Backspace FAQ:
Both the Agent-Author Seminar and the 2010 Backspace Writers Conference offer access to agents so that authors can talk about their project, get a feel for the agents’ personalities and interests, and learn from the agents’ cumulative knowledge and experience. We offer workshops, not pitch sessions, which means that while an author can get their work in front of agents, if the agents feel it’s not yet ready (or if your opus is not quite finished), authors haven’t burned any bridges. The agents know that based on what authors learn at the conference, they might want to take another pass through their manuscript before they submit it. So while ideally, authors will be coming to the seminar with a finished manuscript in hand, they can still connect with agents and learn from their feedback, even if their work is not quite finished.
Writers generally have to do a lot of self-educating about both writing craft and the publishing industry. Conferences like Backspace Writers Conference can offer an excellent set of resources for a writer’s continuing education and professional network.
