What Makes a Book “Good”?
If someone tells you they’re reading a book, your first question is likely to be, “Is it any good?” This is one of the most common questions I get at the bookstore, and it might be one of the hardest to answer. And it can be just as tricky when you’re considering whether the project you’re working on is any good—and whether it’s good enough to pitch to agents or to self-publish.
What Bookselling is Teaching Me About Writing
It may not be earth-shattering news that bookstores return books that don't sell to the publisher, but the process of physically pulling these books from shelves to ship back to their publishers has profoundly illustrated for me the power that each bookseller, each reader (that's you!) has in keeping books on the shelf.
Reading Like a Writer
With the launch of the Book Club for Writers last week I have rediscovered the pleasure in spending time with a novel and really looking at it from a craft perspective. Reading a book this way means you don't even have to like it to get something out of it.
AI Got You Down?
This past week, in the swirl of conversation around AI and whether or how it will replace writers and other artists, word broke of Jane Friedman's discovery of work attributed to her on Amazon.
The Beginner’s Advantage
There is nothing more humbling than trying something new as an adult when it seems like everyone around you has already mastered it.
The Trouble With Writing Advice
If you’ve spent any time at all within a writers’ group or the hallowed halls of some kind of school setting, there is for sure one thing given freely: writing advice.
The Key to Your Success Is Rejection
Are you ready to face the many, many nos or outright silences? Are you prepared for the impolite and downright rude responses? Writing can be such personal work and when our work is rejected, it can feel like a dismissal of our very selves.
If Not Now, When?
Never does a writer sit down in her charming garret and write her first perfect sentence on through to the last. Jane Austen didn't do it and neither does any of our other current-day heroes. Art isn't born of ease or dreams.
Where To Even Start
What does your character walk into the novel wanting more than anything in the world and what’s keeping him from getting it?
Manifesting Your Novel
I believe you can manifest what you want—your novel, in this case. Not in a get-rich-quick, increase-your-follower-count kind of way, but in a deeply satisfying, action-oriented kind of way. And I believe there is an element to it that will certainly feel mystical and destined.