Subject matters
By Bruce Harris
Author, and Editor of the Writing Short Fiction website
firstwriter.com – Monday October 20, 2014
Once the decision to write has been made, the next step is to decide what to write about. For many people, unfortunately, this first hurdle is the one they stumble over so badly that they never get back up. For others, the choice is obvious; with particular interests and experience in one of the prominent genres such as sports, science, historical or crime writing, they can immediately make use of their professional lives in their fiction writing. Genre writing has limitations and restrictions of its own, and many people who have taken the decision to write will be reluctant to be pushed so severely in an unnecessarily narrow direction from the start.
Thematic writing: a method
By Bruce Harris
Author, and Editor of the Writing Short Fiction website
firstwriter.com – Wednesday August 20, 2014
Writing to themes can be seen as an interesting discipline or a frustrating restriction. It is more popular with magazine editors than it is with competition organisers, probably mostly because the former want to keep the submissions to manageable levels, while the latter want as many entries as possible to increase revenue.
How I got a publishing deal - An interview with author, Francis Sookraj
firstwriter.com – Sunday July 20, 2014
Francis Sookraj recently acquired a publisher using firstwriter.com's database of publishers, after exhausting the contacts in the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook. We asked him about his writing, and how he found success.
"Good stories are not written. They are rewritten."
By Marcella Simmons
Freelance Writer
firstwriter.com – Tuesday May 20, 2014
Back in 2005, I started several romance suspense novel projects that lay unfinished in file folders until 2012. The rough drafts were anything but good, so drudgingly, I tore the first manuscript apart, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, word by word, until it was a much better read than the first two rewrites. I sent it out via email to ten different publishers, one being Harlequin Romance. "This is the book that will make me famous," I declared that day. Weeks passed, and rejection after rejection poured in until eight publishers had declined. Some weeks later, Harlequin finally rejected it and I gave up hope. "I'm not cut out to be a book writer," I repeatedly reminded myself.
How I got a publisher - An interview with author, Peter Rossfour
firstwriter.com – Thursday February 20, 2014
Peter Rossfour recently acquired a publisher using firstwriter.com's database of publishers. We asked him about his writing, and how he found success.
How I got a publishing deal - An interview with author, Christine McAteer
firstwriter.com – Monday January 20, 2014
Christine McAteer recently acquired a publisher using firstwriter.com's database of publishers. We asked her about her writing, and how she found success.
How I got a publishing deal - An interview with author, Rachel North
firstwriter.com – Friday September 20, 2013
Rachel North recently acquired a publisher using firstwriter.com's database of publishers. We asked her about her writing, and how she found success.
What went wrong with the Writer's Market and the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook
By J. Paul Dyson
Managing Editor, firstwriter.com
firstwriter.com – Tuesday August 20, 2013
If you're anything like me, you've probably spent years buying books like Writer's Market, and Writers' & Artists' Yearbook. And if you're anything like me, then the reason you did so was to get contact details for literary agents, publishers, and magazines. You were probably vaguely aware, as I was, that there were other things in there – articles you never read, and lists of obscure things you didn't need – but you probably had the impression that they were little extras tucked in around the edges. Maybe 10% of the total. That's what I thought.
It's only recently that I've come to realise how wrong this is – just how little of these books I actually find of any use. When you start to add up the pages, it makes for some surprising statistics.
The importance of writers' groups
By Marcella Simmons
Freelance Writer
firstwriter.com – Tuesday August 20, 2013
About two weeks ago, I submitted a query letter about my romance novel to an agent found online. Three days after submitting the letter, several emails from this agency were in my Inbox – but it was no literary agent at all. It was a "Print on Demand" company who was trying to get me to pay them $4,500+ to print my book. I emailed the company back, declining their offer and letting them know that my book was submitted to several traditional publishers.
How I got a publisher - An interview with author, Paul Mercer
firstwriter.com – Wednesday March 20, 2013
Paul Mercer recently acquired a publisher using firstwriter.com's database of publishers. We asked him about his writing, and how he found success.
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