I've gotten a few requests from readers of this series to write a few words about how I got an agent. It's a step I skipped because I already had an agent - not …
writing
The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 4: What's in a Cover?
I've got my final cover for The Four Ms. Bradwells, and am so excited about it that I am going to leap ahead in my narrative here to cover the great cover …
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The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 3: Why I LOVE my Editor
You may recall that when last you saw our fearless hero (me!), she'd had the bad judgment to send her editor a revised draft of The Four Ms. Bradwells on …
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The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 2: Brainstorm, and Revise, Revise, Revise!
In Part 1 of this little series, "Manuscript Puberty," I shared the experience of sending a first draft of my new novel, The Four Ms. Bradwells, to my editor, …
The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 1: Manuscript Puberty
I just got my first peek at the likely cover for my new novel, The Four Ms. Bradwells, along with a description of what the book is about. The two together got …
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Professional Writer or Amateur?
I had the great pleasure of paneling with Richard Bausch - who is not only a wonderful writer, but also a kind and generous one - at the AWP conference last …
J.K. Rowling: The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
This video, though a couple years old, came to me today: J.K. Rowling giving a commencement speech at Harvard, on having "failed on an epic scale" within 7 …
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Erma Bombeck on Snow-Blindness
"To say, 'Well, I write when I really get into it' is a bunch of bull. Put the paper in the typewriter, stare at it a long time, get snow-blindness if you have …
Jane Austen: Fourteen Years of Rejection
I just read a wonderful piece in The Literary Review that says, in the context of a review of a new book about Jane Austen: "In 1797, Thomas Cadell made one of …
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Open Veins
Are personal essays inherently solipsistic? I'd like to take credit for that perfect word choice, but the credit belongs to my writer-friend, Leslie Berlin, …
