The other day my daughter and I were in the car headed down the two-lane county road that leads from the big town to our small town when I noticed a new caution sign. So I slowed down. Half a mile or so later, I discovered that an intersection was being repaired, and a somewhat…
Month: July 2009
Doing the work
On any given day, a couple of people write to me about what they’re working on and when I express interest, they promise a proposal or sample chapters that never hit my inbox. I’ve already written about these “pre-queries” (main message: don’t do them), and won’t repeat myself here, but I’ve been thinking about it…
Meditation on book proposals
If you want to write a non-fiction book, you need a book proposal to convince agents to represent your book and to convince editors to publish it. As a writer, I’ve found that the process of writing the proposal helps me wrestle with the prospect of spending the next year with this project. Do I love…
Growing in your own backyard
The other day, I was reading this Salon piece, where a writer “rejected by the world” isn’t quite sure what to do next. Reading this it struck me that we have such misconceptions about how people become good writers. The whole notion that you have to go backpacking across Europe and live as an expatriate…
When goal setting goes wrong
I love goals. This is probably because I have an unhealthy craving for external validation, and reaching a goal is something that gets you pats on the back from other people. There’s an entire cottage industry on how to set and achieve goals, and they say things like, “Goals should be SMART: Specific, Measureable,…