11 January 2016 - What's new
11 January 2016
- 'Getting published is a major preoccupation for many writers. How do you get an agent? How do you self-publish? And how do you decide which to do - and when to give up on agents and go for self-publishing? These are the questions which reverberate around writers' heads. Most writers can hugely improve what they've written with the right advice, and then they stand a much better chance...' News Review on Publishing your book.
- We covered Tina Seskis, see below, in our Success Stories series: '...an irresistible subject for a Success Story because she lives just up the road from WritersServices in north London and the reasons for her success as a writer are like a textbook illustration of how to do it. After university, she went on to work in marketing and advertising for more than 20 years and it was this experience which stood her in good stead when she found herself with a book to market...' There's also Gillian Flynn and Jessie Burton.
- ‘Once I get an idea in my head it's an adrenaline rush, and I'm racing to get to the end. I think fast and write fast. It sounds uncreative, but I write from 9-5, four days a week. I have two kids and have had to be very structured. I start a book every January, it's due in June, I edit during the summer and it's published during the autumn...' Cecelia Ahern, author of PS I love You and The Marble Collector in the Telegraph's Stella provides this week's Comment.
- Do you want to self-publish your work? WritersServices offers a suite of services which help writers get their work into shape before they self-publish. Our page of Services for Self-publishers includes Copy editing, Blurb-writing, Poetry Collection editing and Translation editing.
- Our links: the Guardian's review of Sarah Howe's wonderful debut collection, Loop of Jade by Sarah Howe review - the winner of the TS Eliot prize | Books | The Guardian; in the year of the 400th anniversary, a journalist explores his own obsession, My Shakespeare Obsession: A Question of Character; and swearing off Amazon and the pleasures that returned, A New Year's resolution worth keeping: support bookshops instead of Amazon - Spectator Blogs.
- Top Ten Tips for non-fiction writers is a helpful checklist for writers, compiled by a Creative Writing tutor.
- More links: more from Tina Seskis: 'five and a half years ago, I had an idea for a story. It was so out-of-the-blue and exciting to me that I just started writing it down...', Getting Published: What To Do If You Can't Get An Agent; should authors be paid for festival appearances, Philip Pullman resigns as Oxford literary festival patron over lack of pay for authors | Books | The Guardian; and an erudite overview of the differences between US and British children's writers, Harry Potter vs. Huckleberry Finn: Why the British Tell Better Children's Stories Than Americans - The Atlantic.
- 'I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.' Françoise Sagan in our Writers Quotes.
