What's New in 2017
- ‘I love structure in a novel and the detective story is probably the most structured of popular fiction. Some would say that it is the most artificial, but then all fiction is artificial, a careful rearrangement by selection of the writer's internal life in a form designed to make it accessible and attractive to a reader. The construction of a detective story might be formulaic; the writing need not be...' P D James writing about detective fiction in her book 1999 book, Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography, which can be found on the wonderful new website dedicated to P D James launched by Faber & Faber this week. Our Comment.
- Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2017 is open to any poet aged 18 or over from anywhere in the world. There is an Open category and an English as an Additional Language category, which is open to poets who write in English as an Additional Language.The entry fee is £5 per poem and the prizes are £1,000 for each category and £200 for each runner up. Closing 28 August. Other Writing Opportunities.
- Just out, the June Magazine, a great place to find the News Reviews and Comments of the month and to catch up on nearly 50 links to articles from across the world you might have missed.
- Can this be true? A recent study quoted in Bookbrunch claims that 52% of UK adults believe they have a book in them. And, according to the old adage, that's where it should stay. Figures produced suggest that those thinking they could write a book could amount to 25 million people in the UK. News Review
- Tips for writers is our 8-part crash course for writers, taking you from Improve Your Writing to Promoting Your Writing (and Yourself), from Self-publishing: is it for you? to Submission to publishers and agents. 'Think about the market for your book. Research the category and read widely to see what other published writers in this area are doing. Which writers are successful and why? Visit bookshops and analyse what you find there. If you are reading this you are probably already writing, but it really is worth thinking right from the beginning about your readers, as that makes it far more likely you'll eventually find them...'
- Our links: an illuminating article with a great infograhic, What is the Theme of a Book? An Author's Guide • Reedsy Blog; the latest acquisitions chart on the number of deals by London agents, which shows how new editors are setting the pace, Curtis Brown leads the way in dealmaking as new lists thrive | The Bookseller; when you can communicate in 140 characters, why do you need four to five paragraphs? The Difference Between a Press Release and a Pitch (You Need Both) | Jane Friedman; typescripts of books, poems, essays, scraps of paper, letters, In the Era of Digital Composition, What Should a Writer Keep? - The New York Times.
- Our Services for Writers - just a list of 20 services to help you get your work ready for publication.
- More links: thoughtful and sometimes surprising, 100 Must-Read, Best Books On Writing And The Writer's Life; have you ever had one of those moments where you kinda sorta agree with someone's conclusion and yet still disagree with many of the assumptions that lead to the conclusion? On eBooks Being a Dead Format | The Digital Reader; some rather fascinating insights into readers, Reader Analytics from Jellybooks: Crunching the Numbers to Improve Book Marketing and Sales | Jane Friedman; and a rather personal list of books on the lives and works of children's book creators, which can offer plenty of drama and intrigue even to the most grown-up of readers, Adult Nonfiction from the Children's Lit World.
- 'Writing a novel can feel like hacking away at a rock face - and it takes two or three years - whereas short-story writing is much faster. Either it arrives or it doesn't.' This comes from Penelope Lively in our Writers' Quotes.
- 'A powerfully-argued article in the Bookseller's Futurebook has highlighted how the explosion in social media and freemium games means we have reached saturation point - what the author defines as ‘peak attention', where the time we have available has run out and we have to cut down on something, which will very probably be books...' News Review
- How to get your book translated into English (without it costing the earth) asks writers who are not native English speakers with a manuscript which needs polishing or translating: "if your English is good enough, what about translating your book yourself or writing in English, and then getting your work polished and copy edited by a professional editor who is a native English speaker?" This could be a cost-effective way of reaching the international English-speaking market.
- ‘A short story... can be held in the mind all in one piece. It's less like a building than a fiendish device. Every bit of it must be cunningly made and crafted to fit together perfectly and without waste so it can perform its task with absolute precision... The ideal short story is like a knife - strongly made, well balanced, and with an absolute minimum of moving parts.' Michael Swanwick, author of many short stories and a number of SF novels including Chasing the Phoenix, provides this week's Comment.
- Advice for Writers is a really useful page which takes you into our archive and helps you explore our 6,000 pages of information for writers.
- Our links: from a writer who doesn't believe in rules, 10 Writing Rules You Can (and Should) Break; a thoughtful article which shows how the literary world is already being hit hard by the Trump administration, Is Trump Ruining Book Sales? | New Republic; a third piece from editor Terry McDonell, So You've Decided to Write: Will You Tell the Truth? | Literary Hub; and you should probably not write a book. And you shouldn't pay someone to write one for you either, Not everyone on the internet should write a book - Quartz.
- Under 24 different headings we have hundreds of recommended links to sites for writers, including Poetry Sites and Writers Online Services. Share with us any new links you'd recommend.
- More links: a long but elegant article on writing memoir, Literary Style and the Lessons of Memoir | The New Yorker; sometimes I want an opening to slap me in the face; other times I'd rather it come on like a creepy hand across my shoulder, Top 10 opening scenes in books | Books | The Guardian; and a writer whose many thoughts on writing have been widely shared, taught, studied and adapted, Kurt Vonnegut's Greatest Writing Advice | Literary Hub.
- If you need to get your material typed up, but can't face doing the job yourself, Typing manuscripts is a service for writers who have an old or handwritten manuscript or audio tapes, which need typing before they can proceed with reworking, submission or publication.
- 'The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.' Mark Twain in our Writers' Quotes.
- 'The meaning of a story emerges in the meeting between the words on the page and the thoughts in the reader's mind. So when people ask me what I meant by this story, or what was the message I was trying to convey in that one, I have to explain that I'm not going to explain...' Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials and the forthcoming The Book of Dust, provides our Comment, from his website.
- The Galley Beggar Press is having an open submission which is open to all with no entry fee, with possible publication as the prize. They are looking for adult literary fiction and narrative non-fiction till 31 July and again from 15-30 November 2017.
- Are you writing for the children's market? Have you found it difficult to get expert editorial input on your work ? Do you want to know if it has real commercial potential? Or are you planning to self-publish? Our four Children's Editorial Services are provided by skilled children's editors and will help you get your work published.
- Our May Magazine is now ready, offering easy access to a range of recent articles and links, such as 'Show me the money!': the self-published authors being snapped up by Hollywood | Books | The Guardian and The Most Common Entry-Level Mistake in the Writing Game | Jane Friedman.
- Figures quoted by China Daily show that publishers in China are benefiting from 300m users of mobile devices who read electronic books. The market is up 25% year on year and reached $1.7 billion in sales last year.... Difficult though it can be to get western books into China, this presents a huge opportunity for international publishers and their authors, although of course the biggest potential is for Chinese writers reaching readers in their own country and beyond. News Review
- From our Archive, Writing for Children: Rule Number One - Read More than You Write by Sarah Taylor-Fergusson: 'Author opinion falls into two camps on this one, with some writers maintaining that reading fiction while writing is a very bad thing. To this I might say that if you have been working for years as a published author, and you have that degree of sophistication, dexterity and confidence, then maybe sometimes yes. But for the majority of us who are not at that level...'
- Our links: perhaps you're considering self-publishing, and want to have a thorough understanding of each part of the process, 10 Steps To Self-Publishing Your Book | HuffPost; being a published author is still widely considered a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field, but Will Writing That E-Book Really Boost Your Business? Contract clauses giving publishers the right to drop authors who act "immorally" are becoming more common, Authors warned not to sign 'morality' clauses | The Bookseller; and a pragmatic article about how to approach Twitter etc, So You're an Author Without a Social Media Presence: Now What? | Jane Friedman.
- How to market your writing services online is a useful article from Joanne PhillipsUK-based freelance writer and ghostwriter. She has had articles published in national writing magazines, and has ghostwritten books on subjects as diverse as hairdressing and keeping chickens. Visit her at www.joannephillips.co.uk about selling yourself as a writer. 'Recently someone commented to me that I seem to be doing a pretty good job of promoting my writing services on the internet. I was touched by the observation - we writers get so many rejections that a little praise is especially gratifying. And I began to wonder - what does it take to market yourself successfully as a jobbing writer today?...'
- More links: another article with an editor's thoughts: So You've Decided to Write: When to Drown Your Darlings | Literary Hub; unlike Gone Girl, Girl on a Train, The Girls, Luckiest Girl Alive and others, Final Girls is written by a man, Forget George Eliot: now it's male authors disguising their sex to sell more books | Books | The Guardian; and, not if you like your crime fiction hardboiled and noir-ish, Crime in the City: Singapore, World Capital of the Cozy Mystery | Literary Hub.
- Authors often find it difficult to write their own synopsis for submission to publishers, which is where our Synopsis-writing service can help. If you're preparing to self-publish and having difficulty with your blurb, our Blurb-writing service is what you need. They are all part of the biggest range of services offered on the web, Our Services for Writers.
- 'People are certainly impressed by the aura of creative power which a writer may wear, but can easily demolish it with a few well-chosen questions. Bob Shaw has observed that the deadliest questions usually come as a pair: "Have you published anything?" (loosely translated as: I've never heard of you) and "What name do you write under?" (loosely translatable as: I've definitely never heard of you).' Brian Stableford in our Writers' Quotes.
- ‘The rise of nationalism, including in the United States, but also through Europe and even in Asia, has underscored the importance of internationalism - as a subject and as an approach to the markets for the publishing community and for writers. This has been coming for a while, although it arrived as a great surprise to many people. The seeds of it have been planted earlier...' Andrew Wylie of The Wylie Agency in Publishing Perspectives, quoted in our Comment column.
- The Winchester Poetry Prize 2017 is open to all poets over 16. Entry fee £5 and £4 for further poems. First Prize £1,000, Second Prize £500, Third Prize £200. Enter now to get your poems in by the 31 July deadline.
- Getting ready to publish your book - are you planning to self-publish your work? WritersServices offers a suite of nine services which help writers get their work into shape before they self-publish. Services for Self-publishers.
- This week's News Review: 'Figures from the US continue the trend in book sales which shows children's books doing well and hardback sales outpacing trade paperback and mass market segments. It's good to see positive figures - unit sales for 2017 are 3% higher than in the first 6 months of last year...'
- Bob's Journal is a long-running column from writer Bob Ritchie described by fellow EastEnders script-writer Pippa McCarthy: 'Just discovered your web page... I've just spent the last hour crying with laughter with periodic yelps of 'been there!'... I'm going to make my entire family read your diary. Then perhaps will understand own bizarre behaviour every time I start a script... Anyway, will shut up now but just wanted to say you have cheered me up no end. It's brilliant.'
- Our links: some more good news from the US, Bookstores holding their own against digital onslaught - CBS News; at what point does a writer earn the right to declare they are A Writer without a self-deprecating smirk? When does a writer become a professional? | The Bookseller; you keep telling yourself you're going to "get around to it" but you blink and days, weeks, even months have gone by without typing a single word, How to Write Even When You Don't Feel Like Writing | HuffPost; and why it's fast becoming the preferred choice of writers from the neighbouring countries, India is the new publishing haven for writers from Pakistan, Sri Lanka. Here's why | books$ht-picks | Hindustan Times.
- Getting Your Poetry Published has some suggestions on how to get started with this. 'Don't even try to approach publishers until you have a collection-length amount of material to offer. Your chances will be much better even then if you can point to publication of your poems in magazines. Don't waste any time trying to get a literary agent to represent you...'
- More links: depending on how well you write and how often you publish or change jobs or assignments, other writers come in and out of your life, So You've Decided to Write: Advice from a Great and Notorious Editor | Literary Hub; when Bushra al-Fadil landed in London to receive the 2017 Caine Prize for African Literature, he spent a day perusing the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Sudan's Caine prize winner wants Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa to supports the arts in Africa - Quartz; and, to prove we're now in the silly season, in the northern hemisphere at least, Your Literary Idols and Their Wardrobes - The New York Times.
- Writing Biography & Autobiography is a serialisation from our Archives of the book by Brian D Osborne published by A & C BlackClick for A & C Black Publishers Publishers References listing. In the first excerpt, Managing the matters of truth and objectivity, the author says: 'Just as you need to remember that letters, reports, census forms, legal documents and so forth were not created simply for our convenience, so you also need to remember that what is written in them may not be true...'
- 'No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.' T S Eliot in our Writers Quotes. For the elegant website devoted to the poet, see tseliot.com.
