Friday, May 28, 2021

Finding the Best Comp Titles--What Your Query Letter to Agents Should Include

One of the most challenging parts of assembling a good query letter--beyond the sheer difficulty of writing it--is deciding on your comps.

Agents need and want and almost require good comp titles. These are the two or three titles of other books in your genre that will help yours sell to a publisher.

Friday, May 21, 2021

Why a Smart Story Location Matters--and How It's about a Lot More Than Setting

Realtors know that smart location is everything in buying or selling property. Try to sell a house that's near a busy highway or high tension wires, and you'll learn this. In story, a good location is also really important--I wouldn't say it's everything, but it's as vital as good characters and strong plot.

Unfortunately, it's the aspect of writing that many writers tack on or ignore altogether. Mostly due to impatience, I've learned. Or the belief that once you've described the weather and how a room looks, the reader can retain than for 300+ pages.

I don't know if the analogy really works, but I see smart location like a smart phone--it is where the reader taps in, to orient, to learn more, to feel the character's communication with her life.

Friday, May 14, 2021

Facing the Fear of Finishing Your Book

There's a kind of romance that happens between a writer and the book they have been working on for months or years. A relationship, at least, if not romance. They begin to have feelings for each other, a certain fondness, from all they've gone through together. It hasn't often been an easy road but it's been all-consuming. We live with our books, day and night. In waking moments, we're mulling over plot ideas. At night, we may dream solutions.

This bond forms ever more strong as time goes by and the book is still in progress. Sometimes, as an editor, I see writers hanging onto their manuscripts, fixing one more thing, not wanting to let them go. As a writer, I get this--my characters and the place I'm writing about and the situations all occupy so much of my interior life, I am loathe to release them.

Friday, May 7, 2021

How to Keep Writing When You Have No Time--or Energy or Enthusiasm--for Your Book. Or Do You Need To?

My spouse and I just adopted a puppy. He's adorable at 14 weeks, and full of energy and sharp growing-in teeth. He is slowly, after a week with us, learning how to use the yard for his bathroom duties rather than our rugs. He sleeps a lot, which is a blessing.

But my writing life has been upended. Not to mention sleep. Not to mention every other aspect of my every day.

We chatted with a woman this week who works with animals. She said some of her clients swear than raising a puppy is harder than raising a kid. I've done both and I'm not sure I agree, but it's certainly causes a lot of upheaval. Puppies are bundles of energy. They demand attention, care, love, as they should. They create havoc, happily. They are full of joy and curiosity.

I'm exhausted.