The act of writing often involves tension, and that tension is often a result of time: not enough time to write, for example, or deadlines coming fast and furious. You have only an hour to write this evening, so you better make the most of it. You have a deadline tomorrow, and if inspiration doesn’t strike…
Month: April 2009
The Daily Habit
People are often surprised to learn that even full-time writers, such as moi, struggle to find time to write. You’d think that without the demands of a day job doing something else, a writer would be able to devote hours every day to writing. That’s not true. It’s especially not true for the writing that you…
Behind the Scenes: Pitching Agents
A week or two ago, agent Nathan Bransford did a “Be an Agent for a Day” contest where he challenged his blog readers to read 50 queries (more or less what an agent might see in his/her inbox on any given day), and pick 5 they felt had potential and would, if they were agents,…
How to: Your book and its competition
One of the most difficult parts of writing a non-fiction book proposal is putting together the competitive analysis (this goes by various names but is basically the section where you compare your book to others like it). People often make several common mistakes. 1. They write the competitive analysis after they’ve written the rest of the proposal —…
Things that make me smile
The other day I was at the coffee shop when the train delivering newsprint to the newspaper plant next door rolled in. It let out a long low whistle that sounded something like a foghorn. The barista remarked, “That always reminds me of the call to arm in Lord of the Rings.” Which prompted…
Practice 10,000 Times
A martial arts master once told me, “You have to practice a kick at least 10,000 times before you start to understand it.” Now, if he had told me that on my first day of class, I would probably have been a little discouraged, but I wasn’t a beginner at the time and I conceded…