Tag: agents
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Writing Advice You Should Definitely Ignore
The title of this post is not some clever reverse psychology trick. You really shouldn’t listen to this advice. It’s bad for you and it goes against everything you’ve ever heard from all those lovely and wise literary agents out there. The Chips and Nathans and Janets and the rest. (I’m not being sarcastic here.…
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Good Agent, Bad Agent
Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re a really brilliant un-agented, unpublished writer and you’ve recently finished final edits on a truly brilliant novel. Yesterday you queried a bunch of agents and today you got five “The Call” calls. Don’t laugh. We’re playing “let’s pretend,” remember? How do you decide which agent will share 15…
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Inspiration, Perspiration and Aspiration
Thomas Edison is famously known for coining the oft-quoted phrase, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” Some folks hovering in the shadows of the publishing industry have glommed onto this quote as a rallying cry for aspiring authors. “It’s not about talent – it’s about hard work,” they say. Well, they don’t…
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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.…
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When You Care, Send the Very Best
This is going to be a short post. Because, quite frankly, the topic only needs a few words. Here they are: Never* send an editor or agent a first draft. I could end the post right there. But just in case there’s a lingering “huh?” out there somewhere, I’ll elaborate with three reasons for this…