Category Archives: Writing

The “rebellious major”

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In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas Benton, “the pseudonym of an associate professor of English at a Midwestern liberal-arts college,” writes about why students choose to major in English.

English is, among my undergraduates at least, one of the last refuges of the classical notion of a liberal-arts education.

I ended up a Comparative Literature major because I recognized, however dimly, that academia would let me postpone a bit longer the pressures of real adulthood–it would let me savor, for a few years at least, the freedom to do nothing but think, and read books, and write . . .

Writing grants & awards resource

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Poets & Writers has compiled a list of writing grants and contests that award at least $1000; a list of all the contests with upcoming deadlines; a list of contest winners; and a list of writing conferences.

The banquet begins here.

Yeah, that happened ;-)

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This is fun: The Mississippi Review has published an edition of Freymoir-inspired short stories.

Here’s an excerpt from editor James Whorton Jr.’s intro:

We talk about the various narrative genres — novel, memoir, short story, straight journalism — as though these categories have a separate existence from the particular works they describe. Credibility does not reside in the genre, however, but in the person of the writer. Books don’t lie to us, people do: we’ve been lied to by neighbors, Presidents, and novelists alike, and skepticism will never be made obsolete by any refinement of the literary categories. It will always be indispensable both to citizenship and to literacy.

Via Emerging Writers Network.

E-queries and a prediction (you read it here first!!!!)

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Of the 20-odd agents I’ve queried so far for my current novel, I’ve done only one by mail.

All the rest have been email queries.

I have to believe I’m not the only writer who’s inclined to favor e-querying. It’s cheaper and less trouble than printing and packaging a snail mail query. And you also get answers faster. Granted, most of them will be “no thanks” kind of answers but even they feel good in a weird kind of way. At least you have evidence that things are moving.

But here’s the thing. Many agents — many very good agents — still prefer traditional paper queries.

So I hereby predict that writers who take the time to craft and mail traditional queries will, at some point, have a slight advantage in the agent-hunting game. Because at some point the majority of the great unpubbed will be dashing off e-queries. Which means anyone willing to put in a bit of extra effort and expense will be rewarded with a slightly less-crowded playing field.

I predict you’ll soon be reading writer-advice articles that recommend you seek agents who only accept snail mail queries as a way of boosting your agent-hunting odds.

You read it here, first.

:-)

More agent interest

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I’ve queried 21 agents so far for my latest completed novel, “When Libby Met the Fairies and Her Whole Life Went Fey.”

I mentioned previously that I got a request for a partial. Now I’ve also had a request for a full.

My query has now gone through one major and one minor revision. The major revision came after I queried Kristin Nelson and she noted that although the title sounded light, the query came across as dark. It was a spot-on critique, so I rewrote the query to bring its tone more in line with the tone of the book.

Now, this week, Anne Hawkins is the guest on Dorothy Thompson’s Yahoo forum, TWLAuthorTalks. I wasn’t going to query her/her agency — their list is so literary — but in her introduction she said she looks for fiction that’s on the border between literary and commercial.

Hmmmmmm.

I can’t presume that I’m able to hit that spot, but I will say it’s my ideal, as a writer. A book that’s plotted to keep things moving but doesn’t shy away from a pretty turn of phrase once in awhile . . . after all, that’s what literature once was.

In any case, the last rev I did to my query, I added in a couple of sentences about the — I wouldn’t say darker, but maybe “more human” elements of the plot — human in the sense that all of our lives are leavened, to some degree, by fear of aging and death, by the scars of betrayals we’ve either committed and betrayals we’ve suffered, by the disappointments of realizing our best-laid plans were actually elaborate illusions — my book doesn’t wallow in those themes but they are there.

Yet there’s also a romance . . . and little folk.

So you see, I need my query to show both. It’s not easy . . .

My title may not be quite right, for that matter. It may be skewed too much toward “lite & frothy.”

Lots of nuances to juggle, to pull this stuff off . . .

Do scholars have rights?

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You may have read about the tussle between James Joyce‘s heirs — in particular, his grandson — and the scholars who want more and freer access to Joyce’s writings — including, of course, his personal writings.

Here’s a Globe and Mail article about it, linked today by Booksquare.

It’s an interesting conundrum, but on balance, I’m on the grandson’s side. I daresay he’s a curmudgeon. But I don’t believe, for a second, the claim made by those he’s fighting that this will “drive young scholars away from marvels of James Joyce’s writing.” That’s a red herring — it’s intended to make this sound like a noble fight, when really it’s just a bunch of guys who are irritated that there’s a bump in the road to prestige and tenure.

Joyce wrote books. He wrote them for the public. Anyone who wants to marvel at his writing can just read his books.

Ironic that deconstructionist scholarship opens the door to inhuman attitudes toward writers’ personal lives. Nobody can just leave Joyce’s books to stand as discreet works of art. Nooooo. They have to be dissected, all their parts pinned to a board and labeled and cross-referenced to minutiae about his personal life.

I nearly burned all my journals, once. I didn’t do it. But I might, yet. I can understand the impulse to frustrate the inappropriately curious, the people who assume an entitlement without regard to another’s dignity or privacy . . . or, even more heretical yet, another’s wish to control his own life’s narrative . . .

In praise of literary agents

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No, I’m not writing this post on the off-hand chance that one of the agents I query will happen to find my blog. Although I don’t mind any agent knowing how grateful I am for what they do for writers.

This is a true valentine.

I started composing these thoughts a couple of weeks ago as I reflected on all the squirrely faux pas (I am so tempted to edit that to faux pases — better yet, faux pawses — squirrely faux pawses, get it???) that I’ve committed since completing my first novel some years ago (genre romance, MS hidden away now for all time).

Some of the “shoulda known better” things I’ve done:

* Submitted work that wasn’t, ahem, “polished.”
* Subset of above — submitted work from the wrong file. So the agent got the version that wasn’t polished. Sob.
* Sent sample pages from the middle of my book, instead of the beginning.
* Queried for a WIP — when I have zippo fiction publishing credentials.
* Assumed a request for a full was automatically a request for exclusivity.

Yup, pretty clueless.

And how have agents responded?

With grace and kindness and tact.

And that’s not all. More than just overlooking my newbie foolishness, agents have given me feedback that’s been immeasurably valuable to me as a writer. Their comments have helped me with everything from voice to plotting.

So, if I ever do get published, it will be thanks, in part, to the encouragement and advice I’ve gotten from agents — and keep in mind, these are people who will never make a dime off my writing (although I sure hope some agent will, one of these days).

It’s easy to grouse about the publishing industry, about the difficulty of navigating the querying process — about how formal or bloodless or even curt agents’ rejections can seem, sometimes.

But the fact is, agents want us writers to do well. And most of the time, that’s what shows through — in my experience, anyway.

(Somewhat related — Maureen McGowan blogs here about misconceptions of a newbie novelist, via Diana Peterfreund.

When characters meet “The End”

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Here’s a piece by Charles McGrath in the NewYork Times about authors who have killed off their most famous characters. I won’t list them since it’s a bigger treat to read the piece ;-)

For a hook, he reports that J.K. Rowling has hinted Harry Potter may be headed for an untimely demise . . . well, untimely in the eyes of readers, because think about it, when you become engrossed in a book you step into a fictional time, and that fictional time swells into its own infinite bubble with no relation whatsoever to the relentless line we normally walk — so from our perspective, it’s always too soon for a Harry Potter to go, isn’t it . . .

Yanking the long tail

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In the New Yorker, John Cassidy ruminates on Wired editor Chris Anderson’s “long tail” hypothesis and concludes that although it’s an idea both unoriginal and flawed, it’s still bad news for mid-list authors. How’s that for a tricky bit of pessimism. Makes you feel a touch of ennui descend just to read that sentence, doesn’t it!

Says Cassidy:

Blockbusters and niche products will continue to coexist, because they’re flip sides of the same phenomenon, something economists call “increasing returns,” whereby the big get bigger and the rest fight for the scraps. A long-tail world doesn’t threaten the whales or the minnows; it threatens those who cater to the neglected middle, such as writers of “mid-list” fiction and producers of adult dramas.

I don’t believe that for a second, and not only because I naturally distrust apoplectic apocalyptic apocrypha.*

Because here’s the thing: there’s money to be made in mid-list fiction and adult dramas, and all the other products and services that cater to the “neglected middle.” And because there’s money there, people will figure out how to make it.

Or put another way: whenever there’s an infrastructure shift like what we’re seeing today with the Internet, a few people manage to snatch up all the good spaces on the board before the rest of us realize what’s going on, and as a result, for awhile, they seem to control the game. Look at what happened with the railroads, to cite an obvious example.

But eventually it settles out. Not everyone can be a railroad baron or found an Amazon, but there are delicious opportunities for the smart people who are thinking, right now, about how to reach the neglected median strip of the Internet superhighway. So don’t despair yet. Despite what you read. This is all only just beginning, this Internet thing.

*Sorry, it’s late, I’m punchy!

Got a nibble

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I have a draft of my new novel done, I’ve started querying, and I’ve gotten my first nibble: request for partial came in late yesterday, emailed it out today.

Nothing in the world is more fun than this. Even though I know what a long shot it is . . . how hard it is to fall short. It’s still about the most fun of anything I can imagine.