This year is quickly wrapping up and the holidays are already upon us. How did that happen so fast? Some are closing out the year with great joy and reason for celebration while others are struggling with disappointment. With Thanksgiving …
Writing Craft
How Do We Find New Clients?
At Books & Such Literary Management it is important for us to find authors who have saleable projects. No agency is ever closed to new clients. Some of our clients stop writing, some stop selling, and sometimes the market is …
Inbox Insights: What Makes an Effective Lead Magnet?
There are lots of questions I’m often asked as a literary agent- and some I’m not asked, but writers ask themselves (and their friends). One of those questions is “Do I really need a newsletter and an email list?” The …
Inbox Insights: What Makes an Effective Lead Magnet?Read More
4 Reasons Writers Need a Writing Community
When I was in college, my favorite class was Creative Writing 101. The professor was one of my favorites, and her bohemian, free-flowing style of both living and teaching permeated every encounter I had with her. One of the reasons …
Five Questions I Ask After Reading a Query
Recently I held a “Pitch Me Day” on Threads, a day I created to give writers a chance to pitch their project in a low pressure way. If I “like” the pitch, they get to skip the query and send …
Five Practices for Becoming a Better Writer
Whether you’ve just started putting pen to paper or you’ve been writing for years, one truth remains constant: there’s always room to grow. Becoming a better writer isn’t about waiting for inspiration to strike—it’s about showing up consistently, pushing your …
Building a Writing Community
Writing can be lonely. You sit in front of your computer, day after day, typing away–agonizing over the words that will come together to form the story that you’ve dreamed up. It takes many solitary hours to craft and edit …
Make Non-Fiction Come Alive
Nonfiction comes in a variety of genres and can have tremendous impact on the reader. But within each, the importance of keeping the reader’s attention and giving them solid take-away is important. Your writing can come alive when you use …
Some of my Favorite Fiction Techniques
Today I’m just going to highlight a few fiction techniques I love finding in a manuscript.
Beats
This is a technique the author uses to seamlessly substitute an action that identifies the character in place of the tired old he-said, …
Words as Quandrums
Quandrum. If a quandry (perplexity in a difficult situation) and a conundrum (vexing question) had a baby, it would be…a quandrum.
Writers love words, but they’re less in love with words that are quandrums. “What does that mean?” “How is …