You spend years working toward the publication of your book. Take writing classes. Attend workshops. Mingle at literary conferences. Develop your craft. Work with a writing coach. Write the manuscript. Hire an editor. Revise and rewrite. Build a website and blog every week. Grow an audience platform. Write reviews of books by authors you admire. Polish a proposal. Query agents. Receive rejection after rejection. And you wonder if it will stop hurting so much if you simply give up now. When you get a “no” it hurts. You doubt yourself. You question whether the book you’ve written is any good. You wonder if you’ve been suffering from grandiose delusions about your own talents. When you reread the latest rejection letter a few days later, you might see a glimmer of hope. The agent complimented your writing but didn’t think it was right for them or didn’t think they were the right person to sell the project. So maybe, you think, it’s not you or your writing but simply this wasn’t the right agent. Or maybe the agent is right about an insufficient audience platform, the lack of character development, or the first 10 pages didn’t have a strong enough hook. And you go back to work. You struggle to improve the manuscript. Tighten the narrative arc. Deepen the characters. Figure out a way to repackage the project. Submit essays, poems, or short stories for publication in literary journals or popular magazines. Give readings of your work-in-progress. Expand your social network.…
“When I was seventeen years old, I met the hottest guy…,”so begins Sara Benincasa‘s memoir about a boy who would never pick her as his girlfriend. “Kevin entered a new high school in a new town and was immediately nominated for Best Looking, Most Likely to Succeed, and Best Personality – stunning trifecta of high school laurels… Then, one night in the spring, he walked… [Read More]
Filed Under: Agorafabulous, Agoraphobia, Anxiety, Depression, Dispatches from my Bedroom, Emerson College, Ira Glass, Mike Birbiglia, Sara Benincasa, Sleepwalk with Me, Suicide, This American Life, Warren Wilson College
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Military Writers Society of America convenes in Ohio September 27-29 for the annual conference and awards Banquet. An association of more than a thousand authors, poets, and artists come together by the common bond of love for the men and women who defend our nation, and a deep and personal understanding for their sacrifice and dedication. Their stories weave the fabric of our nation’s history…. [Read More]
J. Robert Lennon makes the surreal perfectly plausible with his eye for details from observed everyday reality in his new novel, Familiar, to be released on October 2, by Graywolf Press. The clarity of his prose offers the reader a fresh, stark, and swift opening that situates the reader’s sympathies with the main character, Elisa Brown. Driving across Wisconsin, she recalls her sons’ early years… [Read More]
Do you have a song lyric you plan to use as your epigraph? Is there a piece of artwork you’d like to see between the pages of your book? Do you want a poem to be inserted into the narrative? Have you excerpted a long passage from another book? Do you use trademarked brand names? Are there tables or diagrams, schematics or sketches that are… [Read More]
Filed Under: artwork, ASCAP, copyright permissions, Fair Use, photographs, poetry, publishing contract, song lyrics, trademarks, US Copyright Law
Blame Aristotle. Blame classical Greek culture. Blame all of Western Civilization. But every story must have a beginning, middle, and end. And more than that. Without narrative structure, a non-fiction book is just a boring recitation of one thing after another. You may think because your book is based on your real life experiences (memoir), historical events, scientific experimentation, or natural observations that you don’t… [Read More]