Jeffery Deaver interview: The secrets of writing a bestseller
cambridgeindependent.co.uk – Wednesday May 15, 2019
Thriller writer Jeffery Deaver was penning award nominated novels - but for some reason they weren’t selling.
After his sixth book - a mystery in the Poirot vein - came out to critical acclaim, but little money, he knew he had to act.
“They were well received, but they didn't do extremely well in terms of sales. Then I re-read them and I realized they weren’t as good as I had hoped,” says Jeffery.
That’s when he began working on something he calls his ‘mint toothpaste’ business plan.
“I’m a big list maker and I was aware that I needed to be more scientific about it. So it was in my late 30s I outlined a book for the first time - after writing half a dozen. That book was exponentially better and so I have been following that model ever since.”
How to write a novel – four fiction writers on Danielle Steel’s insane working day
– Wednesday May 15, 2019
She might be the world’s most famous romance writer, nay the highest selling living author bar none, but there’s little room for flowers and chocolates in Danielle Steel’s writing regime. In a recent interview she laughed at the idea of young people insisting on a work-life balance, and has claimed she regularly writes for 20 to 22 hours a day, and sometimes 24. The result: 179 books in under 50 years, selling about 800m copies.
Some aspiring novelists might just have cancelled their entire lives to get on the Steel plan, but many more are probably wondering if it’s time to try something less demanding. We asked four creative writing teachers for their perspective:
Will Translated Fiction Ever Really Break Through?
vulture.com – Tuesday May 7, 2019
In May 2018, Olga Tokarczuk and her translator Jennifer Croft won the Man Booker International Prize for Flights, a novel that was published in Poland in 2007. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, for which Tokarczuk is a Booker finalist again this year, was translated a bit faster; it only took a decade. One of the biggest stars in translation of this century, Roberto Bolaño, author of 2666 and The Savage Detectives, fared no better. Back in 2003, when New Directions put out his first translated book, By Night in Chile, Bolaño had already passed away; he was a famous writer by then, at least in Spanish.
The process of literary translation takes time, obviously, but there’s something else at play when it takes a decade or more for incredibly renowned authors to reach our shores. This is part of a much larger problem, frequently referred to as the “3 percent problem” by publishers of translation (like myself), which should be troublesome to anyone who believes the world is better off when cultures are in conversation with one another.
More About Agents
By G. Miki Hayden
Instructor at Writer's Digest University online and private writing coach
firstwriter.com – Friday May 3, 2019
Are you talented? Are you lucky? For you, then, agents count. Read below.
Agent Location
Does it help if your agent is in Manhattan, if she’s agoraphobic and never leaves the house?
My opinion is an agent with a Manhattan address is probably more impressive (even if she doesn’t lunch), than an agent who lives in Butte, Montana. Of course most authors who live all over the place won’t understand the cachet of the city address or 212 area code (though many Jane-come-latelys or folks who’ve moved may find themselves stuck with a 646 telephone code).
How to Write a Great Query: Insider Secrets for Success
authorlink.com – Wednesday May 1, 2019
Most writers put a tremendous amount of effort into their content, spending months or years with their manuscripts, agonizing over word choice, scene order, character development. Yet when it comes time to write a query letter, they will often write something off the top of their head, sometimes with a mere hour’s effort, and let this suffice to represent their work. They rush through the letter process so that the agent can get to the book itself, which they feel will explain everything. They feel that if an agent just sees the writing, nothing else will matter, and that a poor query letter will even be forgiven.
This is faulty thinking. For agents, the query letter is all. If it’s not exceptional, agents will not even request to see the writing, and writers will never even get a chance to showcase their talent. For most writers, the query letter—which they rushed through—becomes the only piece of writing they will ever be judged by, and unfortunately, the only chance they ever had.
The problem with authors writing fan fiction
theweek.com – Friday April 26, 2019
The internet was abuzz a few weeks ago after author J.K. Rowling revealed that the characters Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald had an "incredibly intense" and "passionate" relationship with a "sexual dimension." Though this unsolicited declaration was especially bizarre and meme-worthy, it was only the latest of several years worth of post-series changes to the Potterverse. Hermione is (possibly) black, Nagini is an Asian woman, wizards don't have indoor plumbing, etc. Since the final book of the original Harry Potter series was published in 2007, Rowling's website Pottermore has become a fountainhead for excess information about the wizarding world. Conveniently, much of that information has fallen into the category of diversity, as if Rowling thought she could retroactively add queer wizards and wizards of color and pretend they were there all along. Perhaps, like the horcruxes, we just didn't know they existed until the end.
5 Things I Learned Launching a Little Literary Magazine
bookriot.com – Wednesday April 24, 2019
Little literary magazines come and go. Shi’r was here one decade, gone another. So too Tin House, Souffles, The Partisan Review, and Black Clock. Indeed, author Nick Ripatrazone went so far as to write last year that “Literary Magazines are Born to Die.” He didn’t mean it as a bad thing, but rather that we should recognize they have a life cycle and pay tribute to our literary ancestors.
3 Great and Inspiring Books About Writing
culturedvultures.com – Tuesday April 23, 2019
How is your writing going at the moment? I’ll be honest and say that mine personally could have been better this last month or so. I started the year strongly and have reached a bit of a dip. The thing that always helps me to get out of a slump is to get inspired by someone else, be it asking a friend who is busy with their words if I can read for them, or reading a book about writing by someone who seriously knows what they are talking about. Here are three great books on the subject, all of which have helped me when I’ve been feeling a bit down in the writing dumps. They’re the ones I always go back to time and again, whenever I need that jolt.
Best-selling author Harriet Evans reveals her technique for penning hit novels
womanandhome.com – Thursday April 11, 2019
We ask Harriet Evans about her journey to becoming a best-selling author, find out why she proudly displays Golden Girls DVDs, and reveal tantalising details about her latest book...
Harriet Evans is no newbie to the world of writing. In fact, she’s written a whopping 12 books over the course of her career.
Writing it seems is in her blood. Her father was formally an editor at Hodder, the publishing house behind some of the most successful and prolific writers, such as Jodie Picoult and John Grisham.
Writing a first novel is like wandering out into an unclear, inhospitable landscape
irishtimes.com – Monday April 8, 2019
In September 2008, I left my job as a structural engineer to return to university to study fine art. I had also begun creative writing classes at the Irish Writers Centre under the Texan novelist, Greg Baxter, a then unpublished author and a complete unknown to me.
His classes consisted of reading and discussing the work of great writers. We’d submit writing and a week later we’d receive our text back, decimated with strikethroughs, edits, suggestions; and at the end of each exercise there was always a substantial note of criticism and encouragement. I ended up doing three 10-week classes in short form fiction and nonfiction. It exposed me to writers I’d not heard of before. My reading up till then consisted of some classics and whatever had been given good reviews in the broadsheets. I don’t remember Greg giving much by way of general advice throughout this time, other than that he insisted whatever we submitted was in no way to be planned out or plotted ahead. The openended-ness at the heart of this request at first sat uneasily with me. My habits of thought up till then had been, naturally enough, predominantly deductive.
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