Career advice
Today as I struggle to get The Dreamer prepped for publication, I wonder, as I sometimes do, if it was particularly wise to structure my entire life and career around something I decided to do when I was five years old.
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Book proposal basics
Like most agents (like most anyone), I spend my days juggling a lot of competing priorities. I always have more opportunities — in terms of clients I could take on, editors I could schmooze with, colleagues I could connect with, projects I could work on — than I have actual time and energy. So here’s…
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I’ve always written what people call strong female characters in a way they never say, “He writes strong male characters” of male authors. I love strong female characters but encountered few of them in fiction as I was growing up, so that’s one reason I like to write them. Another is that I’m kind of…
Never trust a storyteller
“Never trust a storyteller,” Jonathan Gottschall says in The Story Paradox. There are a number of reasons he says this but primary among them is that we’re always manipulating the story for maximum effect. We think about what details to emphasize and which to downplay. We spend a lot of time deciding which rock will…
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As the novelist Haruki Murakami says, “By viewing it through an unreal lens, the world looks more real.” One of the reasons I enjoy writing fantasy and paranormal and have basically given up writing contemporary romance is because fantastical settings allow me to explore big questions in a way that isn’t mundane or implausible. I…
How to: Your book and its competition
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