Keeping the Publishing Dream Alive

And now I'm back to my regularly infrequent posting!

I have some links for you today. First, my critique buddy Missye passed along this interesting article - 7 ways to keep the publication dream alive. Although I'm surprised at one of her comments (the one about not having the book completed before she queried agents - you can't do that anymore), the rest of them are insightful and a good reminder of the totality of writing.

I don't know how many people here are aware of Women on Writing, but they have a fabulous website with online articles every month - valuable reading, for sure. There's a really interesting article on there about the Shrunken Manuscript. I was thinking how incredibly useful this would be with things like figuring how much space is devoted to a certain character, etc. Take a look at it - for a large overview of your novel and being able to distance yourself like that - it looks useful.

If you haven't signed up for the free newsletter from Poets & Writers, you should. There's a wealth of good information, and even the print magazine is cost effective. They've got an amazing interview with editor Jonathan Galassi. It's fascinating - a real insight into the publishing industry.

Tuesday, Kinda Like Monday... but Not

April marks the 50^th anniversary of Strunk & White. I know a lot of writers swear by it, but is it really the best grammar advice that you can get? One journalist certainly doesn’t think so. Read this article for a fascinating discussion on why the classic – well, sucks. As someone who read S&W and found some of the advice contradictory, it was nice to hear I’m not the only one.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the Agent for a Day “contest” at Nathan Bransford’s blog, you should. 50 queries were posted throughout the day, and people have a whole week to read through and follow the rules of the contest. I read through the queries yesterday. Some of them I could see why people weren’t interested, others left me wondering why people didn’t pick them up. This is why you need to pick the right agents to query. It made me excited about the query I’ll someday write for my WiP.

Well, I don’t want to take up too much time today on zee blog. I got some NIH grants to finish budgeting and a chapter to edit.