Notes From June 25, 2009
I follow a number of agents on Twitter, and the other day I noticed a well-known NYC agent tweeting something to the effect of, "if your book flowed magically from your pen, with little effort and completely intact? It's definitely NOT ready for submission." She's right, of course.
Where do some of us get the idea that writing is easy, or should be? That, because we can speak, we can therefore and automagically write in the same language we speak, and effectively communicate those same ideas? I know that writing comes easier for some of us than for others (not for me, though—the writing is agony—it's the revision that's fun and easy) and I know that our processes are all slightly different. I do not, however, know a single professional writer who doesn't (usually) significantly revise his or her work before publication.
Here's an awfully interesting take on the relationship between glamour and culture, and glamour and art—turns out, it's all about editing.
There are deeply valuable lessons in this clip about writing and revision, and about editing to make written ideas look, feel, sound, and read better.
Notes From May 7, 2009
This is a 45 minute video of an e-publishing panel at the O'Reilly 2009 Tools of Change for Publishing conference. Angela James of Samhain, Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, Malle Vallik of Harlequin, and Kassia Krozser of Booksquare.
These are some seriously smart women, the panel is brilliant and well worth watching. Bear in mind that e-publishing markets are one paying-market sector clamoring for excellent novella-length fiction—otherwise hard to place.
Finally, a warm congratulations to the following AW members (and my apologies if I missed anyone,) feel free to drop me a note on the boards, if you've got news you're excited about.
Erin Blakemore's THE HEROINE'S BOOKSHELF, an inspiring look at literature's greatest and most enduring female characters -- such as Jo March, Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, Laura Ingalls and others -- and their authors, who have helped shape the inner lives of generations of women, teasing out universal tenets of strength and survival, and gleaning the wisdom and solace they offer to help women navigate these challenging times and find their inner heroine, to Jeanette Perez at Harper, in a nice deal, by Larry Weissman at Larry Weissman Literary (World).
Agnes Hahn (Medallion Press) is one of four finalists for the 2009 IPPY award in the Horror category (presented by Independent Publishers).
Claudia Gray, who reports her agent sent the following to PW today:
EVERNIGHT author Claudia Gray's SPELLCASTER, the first in a three-book series in which a well-meaning young witch finds she must call upon darker powers to defeat a dangerous enchantress and break the curse on the man she loves; and BALTHAZAR, a continuation of the EVERNIGHT series that delves into the complicated past of the title vampire; to Zareen Jaffrey at HarperCollins, in a significant deal.
That's it for notes from today, fellow travelers. As always, write hard. Write true. And keep writing.
Notes From April 22, 2009
Long-time agent Donald Maass has a new book for writers; we're delighted to bring you a selection from The Fire in Fiction. Mr. Maass asked what we'd like to excerpt, and I responded that whatever snippet of advice from his book he thought writers most needed to know before submitting. He responded, "I'm sending you a piece on "Micro-Tension", which I believe is the most important technique for fiction writers to grasp."
Lulu.com has acquired a poetry site with a LOT of bad karma to overcome: Poetry.com. Lulu has done some really terrific things for the self-publishing model, and done so without ever misrepresenting themselves or their services. I'm delighted to see the old Poetry.com site—notorious for trying to sucker you into buying collections of poetry slush simply to see your own work included—remodeled extensively. Good luck, Lulu!
Viable Paradise is still accepting applications for fall of 2009. If you're looking for a workshop for writers of speculative fiction, but don't feel ready, willing, or able to make the multi-week commitment to Clarion, take a look at VP. It's an intensive week of workshopping and one-on-one sessions with publishing professionals. This year's instructors include Elizabeth Bear, Debra Doyle, Steven Gould, James D. Macdonald, Laura Mixon, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and John Scalzi.
Ideomancer is looking for Slushreaders. Reading slush is one of the best apprenticeships you can do to learn very quickly what works in a short story, and what does not and never will. Volunteer positions on ezines are actually a really terrific way to fine-tune your own ear. Most webzine staff positions that I know of are non-paying, and the Ideomancer position is not different—but you get to work with people who really love what they're doing, love to read, and take a lot of pride in discovering new voices and terrific stories.
Lightning Source has announced they'll be testing their Espresso Book Machine, and there's a lively conversation on the AW Forum about what this technology might mean for the future of publishing. The more ways to get and read good books, the better, as far as I'm concerned.
Author J.G. Ballard died this week.
Okay, you know what? Can I just say that this looks like one of the most fun book release strategies I've seen in a while? Bleak House Books' Delta Blues looks to be a aiming to build an online community of people who love the Mississippi Delta country, the blues, and crime fiction that incorporates those things, in preparation for the October release of an anthology of crime fiction, by the same name. The anthology brings together stories by some of my personal favorites (and I've been reading crime fiction for a long time)—the contributors list reads like a who's who of exciting and excellent American mystery authors, edited by Carolyn Haines.
Notes From April 14, 2009
#Powellswin 20% off sale! If you follow the link to Powell's online bookstore, you find this statement:
At Powell's, all books are created equal. We hold this truth to be self-evident. Whether any given title is deserving of a wide readership, we leave that decision to you, our customers.
In the spirit of such freedoms that perhaps we too often take for granted, today we're offering friends a special, winning deal.
Just enter the code "#powellswin" by 11:59 pm (Pacific) on Thursday, April 16, 2009, and you'll save 20% on your order of $20 or more.
Coupon valid online only, not in our stores. This discount cannot be combined with other offers. Offer not valid on eGift Cards. Limit one coupon per customer.
Congratulations to Authorscoop.com, celebrating their first year online this week. From their press release, "The sites daily departments—Morning LitLinks, Afternoon Viewing and Evening Reviews—deliver the latest publishing news and reviews with links and embedded video from all corners of the Web. AuthorScoop also delivers exclusive content, including essays on the craft of writing and interviews with both established and up-and-coming authors."
Last in today's notes, but certainly not least, my email brought me information about Reviewfuse.com's flash fiction contest:
Title: Review Fuse Flash Fiction Contest
Prize: $50 Cash
Entry Fee: $0 (must register for free Review Fuse account if haven't already)
Length: 1000 lines or fewer
Theme: Open (must adhere to clean content policy)
More Info: http://www.reviewfuse.com/blog/2009/04/flash-fiction-writing-contest-may-2009/
Deadline: May 25th, 2009
Contact Info: support AT reviewfuse.com
To enter:
- Sign up for Review Fuse (it's free)
- Upload your poem [sic] and choose "Flash Fiction Writing Contest" as the category.
- Submit your story for peer critique.
- Complete assigned reviews of other entries (4 for free members, 3 for premium).
Agent Nathan Bransford has a blog-contest running this week: Be an Agent For a Day. He's posted fifty sample query letters submitted by volunteers, and included three queries for books that were eventually published. If you're in the process of working on your own query-letter skills, you owe it to yourself to at least go and take a look at what the agents you're submitting to face in their inboxes, every day. The contest ends Saturday night, so there's still time to play along, if you want to sharpen up your own rejection-writing skills, too.
Notes From April 13, 2009
If you Google-search "Amazon rank" this morning, the top three hits don't actually take you anywhere near amazon.com. Those top hits either take you to this page, instead, or to commentary about why the Google-bombing happened. And I'll confess, I was deeply, seriously tempted to link the words "Amazon rank" above to the smartbitchestrashybooks.com page, too, because I think it's funnier than heck, and I'm spitting mad about Amazon.com pretty clearly not caring enough about this Easter-weekend "glitch" (that apparently has been going on since late last year, in actuality) to issue any sort of substantive statement beyond what amounts to, "Gosh, there seems to have been some sort of glitch."
LA Times book blog
Wall Street Journal blog on Amazonfail story
Dear Author, on metadata, has the best theory so far
I dunno. Maybe I'm just not in a demographic that Amazon cares about. Right now, though, I'm looking at the Amazon ad in AW's sidebar, and thinking a button that goes to Powell's would look pretty good there, instead. Making Light has a cogent and rational discussion about the #amazonfail debacle, with a smarter-than-average bunch of tech-savvy commenters participating.
And speaking of Twitter, we're playing a query-writing game on the AW forums, inspired by Agent Colleen Lindsay's blog contest back in January, and by this exercise (via agent Janet Reid, on—you guessed it—Twitter!) It's a fairly difficult exercise, which makes it a lot of fun. If you don't want to post in public, think about playing along at home to sharpen your own query hooks.
Notes From April 10, 2009
To lead off, before I get all distracted by something shiny somewhere else on the web, AW's own Kelly Meding deserves a huge congratulations for getting one of the best-looking book covers I've seen on her first novel Three Days to Dead, coming atcha from Dell, in October of this year. You can pre-order.
Kelly blogs as ChaosTitan, and writes about the process she's going through with the publication of her first novel, as well as other bloggy goodness.
With the recent QueryFail/AgentFail flap, it seems like the accessibility afforded by social networking between agents, editors, publishers, writers, fans, and assorted internet wackos is very much fraught with pitfalls, too. Learning about writing, editing, and publishing isn't quite as easy as just Googling a couple of terms. You still have to know enough to understand what you're reading. But with Facebook, MySpace, Live Journal, Blogger, message boards, Twitter, Yahoo Groups, we've still barely scratched the surface, if we really want to talk about the multitudinous ways for people—writers—to connect with each other on teh intertoobz. We've been talking about it on the AbsoluteWrite forums. You're welcome to join us.
And speaking of social networking, here's Social Networking for Readers, as well. It's as easy as falling off a log to find myself spending eight or ten hours a day (or more) plugged into the web, surfing, researching, interacting, and writing, all at the same time—especially since it's sort of my job, too. This is a great article on Realbook.com, with a ton of terrific links and how-to information for the sites.
Todays writing-related links roundup: The Boston Globe on death watch?
With a weekday circulation of about 350,000, the Globe is reported to be on track to lose $85 million in 2009. "For a newspaper of their size, that's just an extraordinary amount of money," says analyst Edward Atorino of the Benchmark Co. Obviously The New York Times Co. agrees, or it wouldn't be threatening to shut the Globe down unless it can bring those losses down by $20 million in a hurry.
Internet News Reporting makes "getting a scoop" obsolete
In the old days—way back in the late 20th century, before the Internet took hold—a newspaper could celebrate a scoop for 24 hours. No more. Today, it lasts as long as it takes for an editor in another newsroom to press the "send" button, immediately matching the exclusive.
More ups and downs in the writing industry, both online and in meatspace. Including the AP, as far as I can tell, trying very hard to exercise complete control over any AP content anywhere and everywhere on the web, including search engines:
The Associated Press is going after Internet aggregators in earnest: On Monday, the news organization said it would require Google, Yahoo, Drudge Report, and other news sites to obtain permission to republish its content, or face prosecution, with AP chairman William Dean Singleton asserting, "We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories."
BWAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAH! Errr, what I meant to say was: Good luck with that, Associated Press execs! What do you have a whole thinktank devoted entirely to making the AP utterly absent from the web, and therefore completely irrelevant in terms of up-to-date news in this century?
On the personal freelancing/shameless self-promotion front, I'm blogging about music—most especially Blues—here, lately. I'd love to see you there.
Notes From April 8, 2009
Holy mackerel.
I'm trying to get into an actual routine (*gasp*!) with updating front page content. It's going to take some practice. I keep getting absorbed reading stuff, instead of writing stuff.
So, without further ado, here's what I'm reading about today, that might be of interest to writers: Fallout from #queryfail, #agentfail, and the other assorted #Xfail topics making the rounds on Twitter, blogs, and message boards.
If you're a compulsive researcher, like me, here's where to start; the newest comments are first, so if you want to start at the beginning, you'll need to click "older." And there are some 84 pages, as of right now, on Twitter alone. A quick Google will bring up any number of blog entries about the ongoing flame-fest. Some of the best, though, are as follows:
Jim Macdonald of Making Light on QueryFAIL. You may know him as James D. Macdonald on AW.
Janet Reid, "The Agent Bubble"
Guardian Article (via @VictoriaStrauss)
Nathan Bransford hosts "Be an Agent for a Day"
Meanwhile, if you'd like to follow AbsoluteWrite on Twitter, just click the link. I'm planning to talk more tomorrow about social networking for writers, in general.