Full speed ahead on revision!
Links from this week:
- A series from editor Chuck Sambuchino called Successful Queries gives examples of real queries that worked, letters that convinced literary agents to request more from the author. Best of all, the literary agent tells why they worked. Helpful for someone like me who’s preparing to query. Chuck also runs insightful series by writers called 7 Things I’ve Learned So Far and How I Got My Agent.
- Tips to fight procrastination from a blog I just added to my RSS feed. Alastair Humphreys is an adventurer — I like the sound of that — author and motivational speaker. If you really want some inspiration, listen to his podcast about travel writing and outrageous goals with The Creative Penn. I kind of want to be Alastair.
- Literary agent Jessica Faust sounds off on the right way to prepare a nonfiction proposal. “There are guidelines to submitting material and there’s advice on making your submissions stronger, but there are very, very few ‘rules,'” she writes, reminding us again that it’s the writing itself that counts.
- The #1 Disappointment of Published Authors — and how you can avoid it, from Jane Friedman at Writer’s Digest.
- Nathan Bransford’s post on How to Respond to a Manuscript Critique is based on personal experience; the literary agent is editing his own novel.
- Writer Lisa Romeo blogged about a collection of essays on the craft of nonfiction at Narrative Digest, from the Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. It’s worth passing along.
- A lesson in self-publishing from literary agent Chip MacGregor.
- Jennifer Blanchard at Procrastinating Writers brings you 43 inspiring writing posts from 2009.
- Literary agent Janet Reid shows us why you should include pages with your query letter — which I’m now going to do based on her recommendation. Watch both links!
Happy Friday!
Filed under: Querying agents, Writers' roundup |
i just pulled a couple of these up! Thanks again for sharing
I knew you would like the podcast with Alastair – he is very cool. I was sort of fan girly as well 🙂
Lots of interesting sounding links here. I had to check out the the #1 Disappointment of Published Authors. I was lucky that my publisher was very direct in letting me know what they would do and what they expected me to do. Now I’m off to check out some of the other links.
Wow, some great links here! I know I don’t comment (have I yet?), but I just want to say I read your blog faithfully, and I love it!
The procrastination tips are awesome. I struggle with that so much. I’m trying to write a post about writing with ADD, hoping the research will help me, LOL!
Thanks for reading faithfully! And for commenting — Now we know you’re out there.
[…] Writers’ Roundup: December 4 Useful links from the well travelled Alexis Grant. Checkout the post she has found from Janet Reid, if only for the video that that post links to. […]