How to Write a Book Without Losing Your Mind
theatlantic.com – Thursday August 2, 2018
A few months ago, I promised some nice people in New York that I would, sometime very soon, write a book.
Since then, I have:
Called my mom rejoicing.
Called my mom crying.
Considered changing my Twitter bio, then thought better of it.
Considered emailing all my ex-boyfriends and mentors to let them know I’m an impostor, then thought better of it.
Extensively researched three different long-form writing softwares, only to find that I prefer the first one I ever tried.
Why Are So Many Wannabe Screenwriters Getting Scammed?
hollywoodreporter.com – Wednesday August 1, 2018
From "pitch fests" to online script coaches, an entire cottage industry has sprung up to help aspiring scribes crack the movie business, and while some offerings are legit, many are schemes designed to prey on the Hollywood dreams of gullible strivers.
A few weeks after Manny Fonseca arrived in Los Angeles in the early part of this decade, having left his native Michigan with the hope of becoming a Hollywood writer or executive, the then 30-year-old was at a party when a producer asked if he’d “like to make a hundred bucks.” Sure, he replied. What would he have to do?
The answer was to show up the next day at a “pitch fest,” one of dozens of such gatherings each year in which hopefuls pay hundreds of dollars to serve up their story ideas to agents and executives who, in theory, will buy them if they’re good. Fonseca would be there as one of the buyers, which struck him as strange — not only was he not an executive, he didn’t even have a proper job: he had been interning with producers Arnold Kopelson and Irwin Winkler.
How the ‘brainy’ book became a publishing phenomenon
theguardian.com – Sunday July 29, 2018
This is a story about a book that just kept selling, catching publishers, booksellers and even its author off guard. In seeking to understand the reasons for the book’s unusually protracted shelf life, we uncover important messages about our moment in history, about the still-vital place of reading in our culture, and about the changing face of publishing.
The book is Sapiens, by the Israeli academic Yuval Noah Harari, published in the UK in September 2014. It’s a recondite work of evolutionary history charting the development of humankind through a scholarly examination of our ability to cooperate as a species. Sapiens sold well on publication, particularly when it came out in paperback in the summer of 2015. What’s remarkable about it, though, is that it’s still selling in vast numbers. In its first two and a half years of life, Sapiens sold just over 200,000 copies in the UK. Since 2017, when Harari published Homo Deus, his follow-up, Sapienshas sold a further half million copies, establishing itself firmly at the top of the bestseller lists (and convincingly outselling its sequel). Sapiens has become a publishing phenomenon and its wild success is symptomatic of a broader trend in our book-buying habits: a surge in the popularity of intelligent, challenging nonfiction, often books that are several years old.
This Piece Of Writing Advice From 'Ron Carlson Writes A Story' Transformed My Creative Process For The Better
bustle.com – Friday July 27, 2018
For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be a writer in some capacity or another. Growing up, I spent all the free time I had working on angsty teenage love poems and cringe-worthy romance stories that were in reality just thinly veiled fantasies about whoever I had a crush on that week. Back then, the words flowed out of me almost seamlessly, but as I got older, I found that writing — and I mean really writing, actually working on a novel — is a lot more difficult than it seemed a decade ago when I still believed every idea I had was pure gold and every word I put on paper was absolutely genius. It had a lot to do with my confidence, or a lack thereof and my fear of creating something terrible, embarrassing, or just plain boring. For years, I found myself starting a project with the highest of hopes, only to abandon it after a few hundred words, convinced there was no way that what I was writing was could ever become an actual work of literary art. That is, until I picked up a slim writing guide that held within its pages advice from author Ron Carlson that transformed my writing process for the better.
No, you probably don’t have a book in you
theoutline.com – Friday July 27, 2018
Has anyone ever said you should write a book? Maybe extraordinary things have happened to you, and they say you should write a memoir. Or you have an extremely vivid imagination, and they say you should write a novel. Maybe your kids are endlessly entertained at bedtime, and they say you should write a children’s book. Perhaps you just know how everything should be and imagine your essay collection will set the world straight.
Everyone has a book in them, right?
I hate to break it to you but everyone does not, in fact, have a book in them.
A Published Author Told Me To Stop Writing Fan Fiction — But The Lunar Chronicles Author Marissa Meyer Disagrees
bustle.com – Wednesday July 25, 2018
"If you ever wanted to be a published author, you need to stop writing fan fiction immediately."
I blinked, wondering how I'd gotten from standing in line for a snorkel at the beach to having my entire geeky world upended in one sentence. Several minutes earlier I'd struck up a conversation with the woman in front of me, who turned out to be a published author. It was January of 2016, so I was about 15,000 words deep into what would eventually become a monstrous, novel-length fan fiction sequel to The Force Awakens, and was so hopped up on having someone to talk writing with that I told her as much.
Cue the existential crisis.
2 Big Book Writing Myths That Will Keep You From Achieving Big Profits
entrepreneur.com – Wednesday July 25, 2018
When my first book was published, I thought it would be an overnight success based purely on the topic and the fact that I knew the world needed it. My genius marketingplan was to simply publish it. If it exists on the internet, people will find it, right?
As you can imagine, that didn't work. It's a bit like showing up to a party, not knowing anyone, trying to make a grand entrance and having zero people pay attention. In fact, it was a lot like that. Hardly anyone blinked an eye or turned their head when my book became available.
Undeterred, I decided that the ticket to my success was that coveted Amazonbestseller ribbon. That will solve all my problems, I thought.
How to write your first novel, according to experts
standard.co.uk – Friday July 20, 2018
Everyone’s got a novel inside them, right? According to Richard Skinner, director of the fiction programme at the highly-esteemed Faber Academy, and author of one of several new books offering advice to aspiring novelists, while this may be true, “very few manage to arrange themselves and their lives well enough to get it out”.
Thank goodness for that, judging from the mountains of novels that do get written, mostly rather badly, which daily arrive at literary editors’ offices by the sackload. If ever there was a good reason to keep it inside you forever, a week spent watching how ruthlessly we dispatch books like so much waste paper should do the trick.
But that’s not the prevailing wisdom. Nowadays, even if mainstream publishers reject your manuscript, you can still be a novelist, thanks to the proliferation of self-publishing companies and creative writing courses, both booming businesses.
How to hook time-poor readers: 16 tips for publishers, booksellers and authors
thebookseller.com – Wednesday July 18, 2018
I’m a mom of four kids, and a book lover. These two facts don’t typically mesh too well. For years, the only time I could find to read was when I finally crawled, exhausted, under my covers at night. It would sometimes take months for me to get through even a short, mindless read. Many nights I’d have to backtrack a few pages because I couldn’t even remember what I’d read in my half-dazed, zonked state the night before. Short chapters were my savior.
It got to the point where I felt guilty buying books because I would never get through any of them. My book-buying slowed down, despite my interest in new releases. I felt like a book failure! In my most stressed out, time-short kid-raising moments, I needed to escape into someone else’s story more than ever, yet couldn’t figure out when and how to do it, or even what to read. And in today's frantic, information-overloaded world, I don't think this issue is restricted to moms.
Writing about pop music is a novelist’s worst nightmare – and I should know
inews.co.uk – Tuesday July 17, 2018
For a writer in hot pursuit of that eye-catching new direction, there are not many greater challenges than the world of popular music. In fact, it isn’t going too far to say that from whichever historical vantage point you aim to examine the shambling behemoth of contemporary music, pop is both a novelist’s dream and a novelist’s nightmare: crammed with ready-made material, larger than-life characters, lurking tragedy and flagrant excess, yet simultaneously awash with protocols, jargon and technical detail that most newcomers to the scene will struggle to comprehend.
And then – even more problematic for an art-form that prefers solid subjects, where it can hunker down and modestly establish itself – there is pop’s built-in ephemerality, the suspicion that last year’s top ten smash will very likely be this year’s bargain bin-filler, the thought of an industry which is changing so rapidly that the whole edifice threatens to dissolve beneath the onlooker’s gaze. For the fan of the three-minute single, pop’s oddly provisional quality is part of its charm.
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