A thing that I’ve heard many writers say many times before is that every book you write teaches you something. I like that idea. It’s a concept that’s always appealed to me. For a long time, though, I was having trouble figuring out what, exactly, each of my failed manuscripts was trying to teach me. ThereContinue reading “How the Writing is Going”
Tag Archives: manuscript
How to Write a Query Letter
So, the first order of business to get Claire Lawrence’s awesome book, Rooted in the Sky, published is the query letter. I struggled with this more than most writers do, I think, because I was ghostwriting it. Though I read Claire’s book, I didn’t know the plot and the characters inside out and backwards theContinue reading “How to Write a Query Letter”
Dear Indie Presses: Claire Lawrence’s Book Will Knock Your Socks Off!
Who, you may be asking, is Claire Lawrence? For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her or taking one of her (spoiler alert!) fabulously inspiring creative writing classes, Claire Lawrence is a Creative Writing professor at my alma mater, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania (and, I should mention, one of my favoriteContinue reading “Dear Indie Presses: Claire Lawrence’s Book Will Knock Your Socks Off!”
The Moral of the Story: What I Learned from NaNoWriMo
Even though there was a rehearsal dinner, a wedding, a weekend spent upstate visiting my beloved roommate, Thanksgiving, and, at the very end, a very nasty head cold, I survived and WON NaNoWriMo this year! Hurray! I now have a very crappy, embarrassingly awful, but decently plotted 56,000+ word novel (I only wrote 50,000 wordsContinue reading “The Moral of the Story: What I Learned from NaNoWriMo”
What 1,100 Words Looks Like: Gearing Up for NaNoWriMo 2011
I’m currently plowing through the book No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty, the creator of NaNoWriMo, as I prepare for the incredibly unplanned month of writing ahead of me. (Being that I’ve gotten SNOWED IN the weekend before Halloween–strange and unacceptable–I have time to start and finish an entire book.) Reading it is actuallyContinue reading “What 1,100 Words Looks Like: Gearing Up for NaNoWriMo 2011”
What To Do When Your Book Idea is Stolen and Made into a Bestseller
Monday (9:00am): Denial. Denial, denial, denial. When they clog up your email, each electronic bad news arriving one after another, providing a summary paragraph that’s startlingly similar to the plot of your own manuscript, refuse to read the: Online book reviews Goodreads monthly newsletter Barnes & Noble weekly newsletter Shelf Awareness daily newsletter Monday (9:15am): Continue reading “What To Do When Your Book Idea is Stolen and Made into a Bestseller”
The 4 Rules of Polite Simultaneous Submissions
I’ve read blog posts before where people claim that it’s “rude” or, at the very least, makes them extremely uncomfortable to simultaneously submit their writing to multiple journals or to multiple literary agents. This is ridiculous! Think about it. If you have submitted your manuscript to a single literary agent, the wait time is, perhaps,Continue reading “The 4 Rules of Polite Simultaneous Submissions”
Chapbook Contest–Poetry, Fiction, and Non-Fiction
On the ride home from work yesterday I got the germ of a new book idea. I want it to be a collection of creative non-fiction essays organized around a theme. Aside from basically everything David Sedaris writes, there aren’t many non-fiction short story collection books for sale in stores. So I was wondering, howContinue reading “Chapbook Contest–Poetry, Fiction, and Non-Fiction”
How I Wrote My First Book in a Rage and Survived
Inspired by a recent post over at storytelling nomad’s blog about authors who are evasive when answering the question “how did I start writing,” I thought I’d elaborate a bit, personally. I’ve already mentioned my notebooks/journals. After reading the entire series of Amelia’s notebooks, I wanted to write funny records just like hers. My firstContinue reading “How I Wrote My First Book in a Rage and Survived”
No Labor Day Weekend Plans? Write a Whole Novel in 72-hours and Get Published!
So this morning I was talking with my new coworkers and most people responded to the question “what are you looking forward to” with a list of exciting holiday weekend travel and/or adventure plans. I was one of those lame (or, if you look at it from another angle, spontaneous) individuals who had nothing specialContinue reading “No Labor Day Weekend Plans? Write a Whole Novel in 72-hours and Get Published!”
Hannah Karena Jones 