The biggest mistake beginning novelists make is writing queries that sound as if they were written by—um—beginning novelists. I was cleaning out my files recently and found some seriously cringe-making queries I sent out a decade ago. I didn’t make all of the following mistakes, but I have to admit to several.Here are some surefire rejection-getters:1) WHINING and/or PARANOIA: It’s not a good idea to mention you’ve had over a thousand rejections and you’re thinking of taking the Sylvia Plath way out. Writers tend to be suicidal. This is not news....
Saturday, 22 August 2009
Saturday, 8 August 2009
Do You Need to Hire an Editor?
Posted on 11:41 by Unknown
Another article from the archives:Choose the right editor: 7 tipsThe term “editor” has several meanings in the book business. The “in-house” editors at publishing companies--the ones who decide what manuscripts to publish--don’t do a lot of literal “editing” these days. According to agent Jenny Bent, the amount of hands-on work they do, “varies wildly from editor to editor…because many editors simply don't have the time or desire to actually edit.”By the time it lands on an editor’s desk, a manuscript needs to be close to print-ready. Agents can...
Saturday, 1 August 2009
YOU MAY BE A BESTSELLING AUTHOR ON TRALFAMADORE
Posted on 10:59 by Unknown
This week, agent Nathan Bransford posed this question on his blog: “How Do You Deal with the ‘Am-I-Crazies’?”Those are the blues that can overwhelm the unpublished/underpublished novelist as we slog away, year after year, with nothing to show for our life’s work but a mini-Kilimanjaro of rejection slips.The truth is, most fiction writers spend much of our lives sitting alone in a room generating a product that has zero chance of ever making a penny—or even being seen by a person outside our immediate circle of friends, relations and/or personal...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
