How to Turn Your ‘Off’ Writing Days Into ‘On’ Days
huffingtonpost.com – Saturday May 28, 2016
When it comes to the discipline of writing, there’s a lot of talk about showing up. Butt in chair. Schedule the time. Keep your dates with yourself. All of this is good advice, and the most successful and prolific authors have the disposition or the drive or the self-governance required to stay the course on the long and arduous journey of writing a book, or multiple books.
Harry Potter and the Minotaur’s Rage: how fanfiction got me into writing
newstatesman.com – Wednesday May 25, 2016
My fanfiction was almost uniformly awful, like most of the things I did or liked when I was becoming myself.
Writing a book with your dad is hard. It's harder if your dad is Thomas Keneally
theguardian.com – Monday May 23, 2016
There’s a thick and slightly battered volume on my bookshelf, with a line drawing of a man in a deerstalker hat. The book, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, has an inscription on the cover page. It reads: “To Meg, who has made and will make great fantasies of her own. Love, your father.” The date he has written is that of my 12th birthday.
The new digital model that treats books like magazines
thebookseller.com – Saturday May 21, 2016
The digital revolution has been something of an asteroid for the whole publishing industry, but it has presented particularly gnarly challenges to libraries, colleges and schools.
How to transfer collections from the stacks to the screen? How does digital lending work, both practically and financially? Which texts would publishers be willing to digitise, and which would languish in analogue ignominy on the shelves?
What's Next for Hybrid Publishing
publishersweekly.com – Saturday May 21, 2016
In 2012, I cofounded She Writes Press with a clear vision for what our press would be, but without a clear definition. We were creating something that combined self-publishing and traditional publishing, curating the books, and placing a strong value on editing and design, but without author platforms or a particular sales threshold driving our publishing decisions. Because our model is author subsidized, we were decidedly not traditional publishing, but we were not self-publishing either.
What makes bad writing bad?
theguardian.com – Friday May 20, 2016
Bad writing is mainly boring writing. It can be boring because it is too confused or too logical, or boring because it is hysterical or lethargic, or boring because nothing really happens. If I give you a 400 page manuscript of an unpublished novel – something that I consider to be badly written – you may read it to the end, but you will suffer as you do.
The Five Stages of Writing a Novel
huffingtonpost.co.uk – Thursday May 12, 2016
Few things in life are more daunting than attempting to write a novel. Leaving aside the amount of words you have to write (novels are usually around 80,000 - 100,000 words), there's the enormity of having to create an entire world, peopled by characters that have come straight out of your imagination. Most difficult of all, you have to keep that world spinning; keep it interesting, keep the twists and turns coming, right up to the very end.
The 15 Stages of Sitting Down to Write
bustle.com – Wednesday May 11, 2016
We all know that the life of a professional writer is exciting, glamorous, and filled with unqualified success. The only downside to a career in writing is the actual writing. Writing, as most people already know, is impossible. If you've ever tried to write something, be it a novel or a term paper, you're probably well acquainted with the struggle of actually sitting down to write.
Know a budding writer? Roddy Doyle has ten tips to get them writing
irishtimes.com – Wednesday May 11, 2016
It’s there in front of you - the blank space with the blinking cursor or the empty page in a notebook. Your fingers grasp the pencil or the pen; your hands hover over the keyboard. There’s so much to say but how to start and, once started, how to keep going? That’s the challenge. You and only you can do it, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
Here's Roddy Doyle with some tips.
Five famous novels turned down by publishers
telegraph.co.uk – Wednesday May 11, 2016
Stephen King received so many rejection letters for Carrie that he kept them all on a spike in his bedroom. When it was finally published in 1974 it was a runaway success, and the paperback sold more than a million copies in its first year.
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