Posts Tagged ‘ publishing ’

What’s J Been Reading? [Feast of Qawl, 23 Nov 11]

Of course, the big news in the literary world is the passing of Anne McCaffrey. The best tribute (I have read) to this amazing author is by Juliette Wade, who discusses how McCaffrey brought genre definitions into play with her Dragonriders of Pern series.  Also at Wade’s Talk To YoUniverse blog: an excellent piece on how hard choices for your characters require consequences.

Melville House, one of my favorite sources for publishing news, details an intense and disappointing exchange between blogger Jeremy Duns, who outed the plagiarism of Quentin Rowan, and the latest accused plagiarist Lenore Hart.  (By the way, considering that her subject is Poe, Lenore Hart must be a pseudonym, yes?)

BEST READ OF THE DAY: Josh Getzler at Hey There’s a Dead Guy gives us a truly remarkable insight into the writing process by showing us how a writer feels when he’s given the opportunity to enjoy his own writing as a reader.  There is so much that can be taken from this piece (for writers and readers) that I won’t say more.  Go check it out.

What Has J Been Reading? [Vespasian's Birthday, 17 Nov 11]

After my brief detour through Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp, I am back into Raymond Chandler‘s anthology, The Simple Art of Murder.  Specifically, the short story “Pickup On Noon Street.”  Lots of archaic racial stereotypes, so I am waiting to see if the story rolls into some redeeming qualities.

In science news, Jupiter’s moon Europa is believed to have shallow subsurface lakes that connect to the deeper moon-wide ocean.  Hard sci-fi writers … On your mark! Get set!

On the writing front: Read more »

Ten Literary Rumors I’d Like To Start

In honor of my friend Genghis Ron‘s blog post, “Ten Rumors I’d Like To Start,” let me offer my bookish version: Read more »

Curing The Heartbreak of Being Published.

I love this article.  It is realistic and honest, even brutally so, but tough and helpful. Love it, love it, love it.

In a blogosphere where so much of what’s aimed at the aspiring writer is positive-thinking pablum, author Ruth Harris offers us some warnings, some disillusionment, and some practical advice on how to get over it all, in her “6 Prescriptions To Cure The Heartbreak Of Being Published.” 

The comment thread is also an eyeful (and a mindful) as well.  Kudos on a fantastic piece of advice!

Protected: A Case Study In How The Dunning-Kruger Effect Can Undermine Literature (And What We Can Do About It)

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Publishing Saturation

There are some numbers floating around the internet, allegedly drawn from Publishers Weekly (but referencing a now-defunct link to a PW Daily installment), that show the number of publishers over time starting in the late 1940s.  The numbers are intriguing, however, because when they are charted they exhibit an exponential growth curve.

Of course, there is a legitimate question as to how many of the later “publishers” are actually one-off enterprises set up to sell a single author’s book or set of books, in which case an apples-to-apples comparison might show a more reasonable growth curve.  For example, PW’s 2002 numbers show that the big five New York publishers accounted for nearly half of the market, while Andre Schiffren at the Washington Post reported in 2000 that the top 20 publishers accounted for 93 percent of sales.  Perhaps the growth curve is largely about the extension of the lower margin of a very tight power law distribution.

Anyone have more reliable numbers?

Best First Lines (according to Leith) – Part 3

In part one of this series, I discussed the pros and cons of insisting on killer opening lines, how it serves the interests of agents and editors more than readers, yet how a strong first line can still lend an air of dignity and confidence to any story.  In part two, I presented my favorite first lines based on engaging ideas.

Today I want to dig into my second list of Best First Lines, six of them, dedicated to openers that present the reader with an engaging character.

You might think that the “engaging character” in question would always be the first-person narrator but, as we’ll see, that’s not always the case.

Read more »

Who Sees What When Cultures Collide?

In a damn* interesting piece yesterday at Talk To YoUniverse, Juliette Wade discusses how writers can navigate the differing perspectives of characters inside and outside a culture group.

She uses her own experience as a foreigner in Japan who speaks Japanese “too well,” but lays out a set of general principles writers can use to make the meeting of any two cultures seem more authentic, whether they are writing historical fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, a modern realist tale about culture clash, or even a story about the distinctive culture of a single family.

Enjoy “Insiders and Outsiders.”

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* Taking Mark Twain’s advice. Sans editors.

Four Approaches to Female Characters in Historical Fiction and Fantasy

You’ve come a long way, baby! I mean … um … ladies.

Women have made a lot of progress over the past century, particularly in the Western world.  Western readers in the 21st Century have a low tolerance for the sort of overt sexism that readers of previous eras — and in broad stretches of the map even today — would simply take for granted.  This puts a lot of pressure on writers of historical fiction and fantasy set in a fictional past.  How can we tell a story with female characters which won’t offend (or worse, bore) modern readers, but which also doesn’t seem hokey in its chronological context?

Well, there are at least four approaches to this dilemma…
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Story structure helps your story fly

Some writers might dismiss the concept of story structure as contrived of stiflingly un-artistic conventions, a set of gimmicks reserved for mere “genre” fiction, i.e. stories with (allegedly) little importance.

You want a story with weight and seriousness? Violate the rules!

Others might obsess about their stories adhering to the proper pattern, as if they are filling out a form.  What page is the Inciting Incident supposed to occur?  Where’s my guidebook?

There is a middle ground, my friends.

Read more »