Writer Unboxed

Lots of industry news this week. First, the winner of the prestigious Booker Prize was announced: Anne Enright, Irish author, has come away with top honors. There are two interesting charity events taking place: All About Romance is holding an auction to benefit victims of Katrina and a bunch of renowned children’s book illustrators are […]

I don’t know what it is about excising a scene, but it’s a scary process–at least for me. Here’s how it goes: Take scene I was previously happy with, rethink it to a bold degree, then expunge so that new scene contains about 10% of old material. Breathe. Breathe some more.
I don’t know why, […]

I’m the sort of writer that gets inspired by oddball characters or intriguing situations. Rarely do I find inspiration in a place. Settings are not my bag in my fiction; I prefer to give a hint and move on to juicy dialogue or a cracking action sequence. Okay, sometimes I like exploring […]

The traffic was tremendous, worse than Albany and beyond anything Hannah could have imagined. Coaches and carriages of every shape and size, delivery carts, men on horseback. A pearly pink hog was nosing around in the gutter and moved only when a carter used his whip on the broad back. There were […]

Wow. I hope that you all read the latest entry over at Writer Beware about a MegaScam pulled off by “agent” Christopher Hill. You should also check out the original plagiarism evidence posted at Dear Author.
Unbelievable.
And the latest books and business news links are up at Google Notebook. Who won the Nobel Prize for […]

So there was a moment this past week when I found myself with nothing to do. My son was with my parents. My daughter was sleeping. My husband was at a football game. The house was clean; the dog was walked; my deadlines were filed. And so…it was just silence. […]

So it really was a hoax after all (thanks, InkyGirl!).  Still, there was enough plausibility in the manifesto to make any writer cringe:
The Happy Endings Foundation believes that children’s books should only have happy endings.  It urges parents to buy positive books for their children.
THEF was originally founded in 2000 by Adrienne Small after she read […]

One of my dear critique buddies told me something I didn’t want to hear a few weeks ago.
“Your hero…he sounds kinda like a girl.”
“No. No, really?”
“Yeah. Sorry!”
Uh oh.
This wasn’t something I could just let go, but I wasn’t sure how to fix it either. Toss the MS to my husband and beg him […]

Sweet salmon mousse on a cucumber, it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these.  I could make all kinds of excuses about it, but I should come out and confess: I’ve been hooked on reality elimination shows lately.  Thank gawd Top Chef is over.  Now I can stop trying to whip up […]

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Legal troubles for Houghton Mifflin, a push to end the selling of ARCS & galleys, the death of Harlequin’s NEXT line, a film partnership for HarperCollins and more. Read the latest books & business news at the WU Google Notebook HERE.
Write on, all!

Novelist Rosina Lippi followed her heart and it led to critical and commercial success for her books. A tenured professor of linguistics at the University of Michigan, she did what many of us aspiring novelists do–write fiction in the corners not filled by job and family. Her novels eventually enabled her to […]