We’re starting to get applications for the five spots we’ll soon vacate here on the Ball, so this seemed an appropriate time for a cautionary tale or two for our successors, and anyone else on the cusp of their debut novel year. The five of us largely blundered our way through this experience like drunkards in the dark, relying on internet forums and obsessive Googling to figure out how this…
Keep the business stuff private. Selling your novel feels a lot like winning Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstakes, Powerball, and the Irish Lottery all at once. You will want to jump up and down on camera holding a giant check, screaming. You will want to receive a passionate, congratulatory kiss and have it broadcast on a Jumbotron. You will want to climb up on stage, rip the mic out of Adele’s…
The sales cycle for I LIKED MY LIFE went like this: edit, send to a handful of publishers, collect rejections, err, I mean feedback, repeat. We were on round three of this daunting process when I sent my agent—the amazing Elizabeth Winick Rubinstein—my latest revision. I no longer obsessed about when I’d hear back, exactly who’d be pitched, etc. I’d come to peace with my always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride lot as a writer….
On this Veteran’s Day, let us say thank you to all the service men and women who have served our country and continue to do so. Their families, too—your sacrifices humble us. In honor of the holiday, let’s learn a few things from veterans who’ve gone ahead of us in publishing. Sure, that’s not quite as heroic, but we appreciate veteran authors, too. I asked five published writer friends to teach…
If you’re asking me, then this is my advice for getting published. Write a good book that you’d like to read. Rewrite it until it’s perfect. Find someone else who likes it (preferably an agent or editor) and get it published. Simple, right? Wrong. I remember hearing again and again at conferences and from other writers that all I needed to do was to write a good book. Why can’t…
