Posted in What I've Learned, musings, novel, tagged writing, editing, test readers, chitties, musings, The Edge of Memory, what's up with that?, blog chain on July 24, 2008 | 5 Comments »
So, my lovely gang of QueryTracker peeps and I agreed to start a blog chain.
I will concede that I did, indeed, agree to join the chain and to post on the topics at hand.
I did NOT anticipate the lengths those cheeky, sneaky things would go to to outshine me…
Not only did they post [...]
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Many big kudos to both Authoress on the Miss Snark’s First Victim blog, and to the amazing Secret Agent Holly Root at the Waxman Agency.
This was a rocking contest in so many ways. Ms. Root invested a lot of time to give thoughtful feedback on each entry to the Are You Hooked? contest. [...]
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Posted in What I've Learned, musings, novel, tagged agents, music, musings, novel, pitching, publishing, queries, What I've Learned on July 14, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Well, that title is a bit misleading… I’m new to writing and publishing and don’t know “everything I need to know” by a long stretch.
The inspiration for this blog post came when a quote from Willy Wonka popped into my head and seemed to fit my quest for publication.
“There’s a hundred billion people in this [...]
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Since I first started writing The Edge of Memory in October, I have spent virtually every minute I’m alone in the car working on it in my head. I commute 75 minutes each way. So that’s a lot of time.
But I think I’m really done now with editing, until/unless an agent or editor [...]
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I do most of my creative thinking in my car when I’m commuting. The rest of my life is just packed with too many distractions.
Lately, having plateaued on edits for The Edge of Memory, and patiently waiting for partials to be reviewed, I’ve been spending time thinking about my next novel, which will be more [...]
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Yesterday, I learned how to use Palm Markup Language. So I have now formatted my manuscript as an ebook (.pdb) for my palm.
With a clickable table of contents, and preserving my formatting.
I have no idea if anyone will ever look at it besides me, but I still think it’s pretty cool.
And possibly, agents [...]
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Posted in What I've Learned, musings, novel, tagged agents, identity theft, novel, partial, pitching, queries, SASE, The Edge of Memory, What I've Learned on May 23, 2008 | 1 Comment »
This is tangentially related to Part II.
When in doubt, err on the side of making it easy to contact you.
A few months ago, I attended a lecture on “What to Do After ‘The End’” by author Sean Chercover.
When asked what he would do differently if he was seeking agent representation today, he told us he [...]
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Ms. Brain-the-Size-of-a-Planet was one of my ex-boyfriend’s nicknames for me (Douglas Adams fan, natch). There is ample subjective and objective evidence to suggest that I am a smart person. And yet…
I have a lovely mp3 mix that I listen to in my car. A playlist of ~200 songs that I listened [...]
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It’s hard to believe it’s been a month already since What I’ve Learned, Part One.
So, Time for Part Two:
Read the Directions.
I know this seems too obvious to bother pointing out. Specifically, it reminds me of one of the most major verbal ass-kickings I survived as a child.
When I was in fourth grade, our teacher, [...]
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I have been a serial monogamist for as long as I can remember. I got engaged to my first boyfriend at 3 years old. Our engagement lasted two years, until we started separate kindergarten classes and decided to part ways.
That’s when I got engaged to the boy I called “Mucho Macho Jason” [...]
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I found a cool gadget for Windows Vista. It links to a site called Bloglines where you can keep track of all your blog feeds.
So I have a sweet little box on my desktop that will instantly tell me if any of my favorite Agent Blogs have new postings, or if there’s any breaking [...]
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Posted in What I've Learned, novel, tagged agents, conferences, jubilation, novel, pitching, publishing, queries, The Edge of Memory on April 30, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Kristin Nelson rocks. Seriously.
I attended her workshop on Query Pitch Blurbs at the Chicago-North RWA Spring Fling. Using her suggestions, I crafted a query letter and sent out an equery on Monday night.
Tuesday afternoon, I got a request for a partial.
She has been blogging on the same topic. Well [...]
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Warning! The following post is slightly spoilerific. So you’ll have to click “continue” to read it.
In case you read about my first agent meeting and wondered what my 60-second pitch was…
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Posted in What I've Learned, novel, tagged agents, conferences, genres, jubilation, novel, pitching, publishing, queries, The Edge of Memory, wordcounts on April 27, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Well, I’m back to my regularly scheduled doctorhood today.
I got in late last night and I’m working a 24+ hour shift today. So I didn’t have a chance to finish blogging about the conference.
Wow. What a crazy, wonderful experience that was!
Saturday, I drove in early for more workshops. I had a great session [...]
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Well, last night got interesting.
First, I attended a great lecture on the nuts and bolts of publishing from agent Christina Hogrebe and author Maureen Lang.
After the lecture was the “Chocolate Reception”. There, I recognized agent Kristin Nelson from her blog picture and hovered nearby like a star-struck teenager for about ten minutes, but there never [...]
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