I’ve modified the opening paragraph of my first novel a few dozen times. It’s safe to say that it has received the most attention, by far, of any section of the book. In fact, I made a couple of changes to it earlier today. While some may argue that I’ve let my obsessive personality get [...]
Archive for March, 2008
A Great First Impression Or None At All
Posted in writing on March 22, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Learning From The Experts
Posted in writing on March 13, 2008 | 4 Comments »
My new hobby is reading literary agent blogs. I’ve found that they are a veritable treasure trove of information and advice about the publishing world, the life of an agent, and writing in general. An agent’s blog is a great place to find out what they look for in a pitch and how to submit [...]
Ctrl-x Is My New Best Friend
Posted in writing on March 7, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Over the past few days, I have mangled the outline I created for book one, repeatedly, mercilessly, and with extreme prejudice. I determined which scenes could be cut, then went to the manuscript and started deleting. (Ctrl-x! Ctrl-x!) I then adjusted the scene before and/or after the freshly cut one, to smooth things over, and [...]
Revealing, Like An X-ray
Posted in writing on March 5, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I decided to create an outline of book one. Sooner or later, I’ll need to work up a detailed synopsis and I figured that having an outline would make the process smoother. I made the simplest outline I could — a spreadsheet where each scene is on a line with the scene number (1.1, 1.2, [...]
Writers In White Hats
Posted in writing on March 2, 2008 | 3 Comments »
One of the Great Truths of life is that there will always be people who prey upon the desperate. Some are legal: sub-prime mortgage lenders, ticket brokers (aka scalpers), payday advance loans. Some are illegal: drug dealers, loan sharks, smugglers. It should come as no surprise that the writing community has its fair share of [...]
