March 9, 2010
- I don't know if I'm just now noticing, noticing the way some writers repeat certain words or phrases for emphasis. But I've been seeing this so much lately, seeing how authors are taking a word or two from the beginning of a sentence and using them again to elaborate, using them in a way that I think is supposed to sound lyrical. As with any writing technique it can surely be done well, done well in a way that emphasizes a key word or two. But when it's overused, overused again and again, it...
March 8, 2010
- Originally posted at the Huffington Post
Slate's technology writer Farhad Manjoo recently wrote a very interesting article about some off-base predictions of yore about our digital future. He focuses on a whopper of a Newsweek column from 1995 (which is actually titled "The Internet? Bah!") about how the...
March 5, 2010
- This week! The Publishing!
Lots of links this week, so let's get right to it.
First up, my client Jennifer Hubbard is hosting in her second annual library loving challenge and you can participate too! All you have to do is pledge a certain amount of money per comment on your blog, and on the contest day everyone will jump around and leave comments on the other participating blogs and link to...
March 4, 2010
I am a terrible liar. I'm bad at platitudes, I can't tell people I like their writing when I don't, and I was never able to get myself out of trouble as a kid. Let's just say that if I were captured by stormtroopers and...
March 3, 2010
- In the course of reading the 400+ queries that came in while I was away (answered!), I saw my share of homonym problems, which I usually just chalk up to typos. There's one, however, that gets me every time: peak/peek/pique. As I Tweeted yesterday, my interest is never "peaked" or "peeked." It's only piqued. (Although certainly my interest peaks when I see someone misuse pique.)
My friend Holly Burns recently blogged about the...
March 2, 2010
There are many, many stories involving a young man, often of unknown/mysterious parentage, who suddenly realizes he's the chosen one and has to embark on a quest against impossible odds to save his people.
And yet...
March 1, 2010
Whew! I'm back in the US and trying not to flinch as I face the virtual mountain of 419 queries that came in while I was away. Query response times will lag until I'm able to catch up.
Meanwhile, I get...
February 26, 2010
It's my last day in Mexico, and what a trip it's been. My wife and I are staying in a hotel at the top of a funicular (every morning should start with a funicular ride) and are enjoying the sights of Guanajuato, an old silver...
February 25, 2010
- As an agent I get to hear lots of different types of authors discuss their writing process and how they go about crafting a world, and especially the lives of characters.
One common refrain is that authors often go into a story with certain ideas about how the story is going to go, but all of a sudden, once characters really begin to come alive they take the story in a different direction altogether.
And this can really help out a story - while obviously the characters...
February 24, 2010
- As chronicled yesterday, San Miguel de Allende is quite an inspiring place. The landscape and architecture are beautiful, the weather is perfect, and they somehow manage to have a spectacular sunset every single night. No surprise, then, that artists and writers have been coming here for years for inspiration. It's a great place for creativity.
It got me to thinking about how all writers seem to have a place (usually closer to home) where they go when they need...
