19 June 2017 - What's new
19 June 2017
- On horror -‘It's one of the genres that live across the tracks in the literary community, but what could I do? That's where I was drawn. I love D.H. Lawrence. And James Dickey's poetry, Émile Zola, Steinbeck ... Fitzgerald, not so much. Hemingway, not at all. Hemingway sucks, basically. If people like that, terrific. But if I set out to write that way, what would've come out would've been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me. And I have to say this: To a degree, I have elevated the horror genre...' Stephen King, author of Carrie, Sleeping Beauty and many other novels in an interview in Rolling Stone provides this week's Comment.
- If you're aiming at traditional publishing, Finding an agent and Working with an agent are two practical checklists to help set up and maintain this vital relationship. 'Try to find an agency which is ‘hungry' for new clients. To keep their workload under control, an established independent agent might take on something like four new authors a year (this figure came from two agents I spoke to recently), but only to replace four departing clients. This may seem obvious, but whether or not an agent is actively looking to build their list of clients is probably the single most important factor affecting how closely they are looking at unsolicited submissions...'
- 'Tracy K Smith has been named US Poet Laureate and in the UK National Writing Day has brought a focus on poetry, with two new articles available from the Poetry School... Poets don't have it easy and there's general agreement that poetry doesn't make you a living, or not unless you're very successful. For poets the rapid expansion of creative writing classes, often taught by poets, has been a life-saver...' Our News Review has a focus on poetry.
- Our Health Hazards series looks at all the particular dangers faced by writers, from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome to Looking after your eyes, and advises on how to position your desk and chair. This really is essential reading for anyone who spends a lot of time at the computer.
- The April Magazine is ready and contains links to some great articles and links you may have missed: The Most Common Entry-Level Mistake in the Writing Game | Jane Friedman, Do two unpublished books make you a failed author? No, you're a quitter | Books | The Guardian and My advice to writers? Glue yourself to an editor who is also starting out.
- Our links: Am I writing a book now? That's between me and my hypothetical manuscript. I've learned to keep my mouth shut, hunker down, and get to work, The Millions : Don't Talk About Your Book Until It's Published - The Millions; Millions dream of quitting the grind and replacing their income through a rewarding, creative endeavour. And what could be simpler - and more glamorous - than writing a bestselling novel? Publishers rejected me, but I went on to earn six-figures selling 1,000 books a day; a two-book deal for the collection and the unwritten novel, False Starts, or This Novel-Writing Shit Isn't Easy | Literary Hub; and the editor who turned down John Kennedy Toole might seem myopic in hindsight, but some of his questions about the novel remain hard to answer, A Confederacy of Dunces: a Pulitzer winner's struggle to find a publisher | Books | The Guardian.
- If you've come to the site looking for a report on your manuscript, how do you work out which one would suit you best? Which Report? includes our new top-of-the range service, the Editor's Report Plus, introduced by popular demand to provide even more detail. This very substantial report takes the form of a chapter-by-chapter breakdown and many writers have found this detail helps them to get their book right. Through our specialist children's editors we can offer reports on children's books.
- More links: proofreaders may be worth their weight in gold to authors, but their oversights have proved lucrative, Misprint the legends: famous typos from James Joyce to JK Rowling | Books | The Guardian; 'The Scandinavians love true crime. The Dutch won't touch historical fiction. The Turks love weepies.' Some insights from an international rights seller, Rights Pro of the Year: Kate Hibbert on 'the Status of Rights Selling'; and two articles from the Poetry School's offering for National Writing Day, 'As any poet will confess, forging a career in poetry is an extremely long and precarious process...' National Writing Day: Anthony Anaxagorou on Working as a Poet • The Poetry School; and starting a publisher, National Writing Day: Publisher Emma Wright on Setting Up a Small Press • The Poetry School.
- 'My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.' Anthony Trollope in our Writers' Quotes.