Writer Unboxed

Some books are gift books. They arrive fully cloaked, with feathers and beads and exquisite shoes, all in place. The writer is required only to transcribe the material and send it off into the world. Books like this tend to be written very fast, with little of the gnashing of teeth and […]

It’s been a while since we’ve filled you in on books and business news. Here’s some of the latest (though some of it may be old news, too):
Author Christopher Paolini’s Brisingr was released this past Saturday. This, from Publishers Lunch:
In the UK, Waterstone’s children’s buyer Claudia Mody tells the Telegraph, “It’s our biggest pre-order campaign […]

I asked myself this question as I watched my little sproutlet destroy a carefully-designed gift basket she’d gotten for her birthday to get at the Borders giftcard nestled in the middle. Nothing else mattered to her in the basket: not the hair bands, the Jonas Brothers cd, the sweet little paper flowers that crafty moms make. […]

I woke up a recent morning, and this is what my brain felt like:
“EEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEE
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Yes, really. Because, ack, I realized that my book is coming out in just one short month. How did this happen? Where did my time go? Not that I had a lot of time to […]

I’ve finally had some free time on my hands and I was able to visit a few blogs that I haven’t read for some time.  One of my favorites is literary agent Rachel Vater’s.  She’s become kind of a big deal (to steal a Project Runway catchphrase) since the early days of her blog Lit Agent X, […]

I’m due to deliver my novel Heart’s Blood to the publishers (one Australian, one English, one American) at the end of November. Over my next three monthly posts to WU, I’ll be sharing the countdown to that deadline.
Ideally, by now I’d have finished the manuscript. I’d be setting it aside for a few weeks before […]

Within the last week, I’ve gone to NYC, met my editor and my agent, and sunk back into some serious edits. I’ll give you my NY recap today; in my next post, I’ll tell you about editing notes and how I’ve responded to them–along with some good tips on critiquing.
So, the NYC lowdown…
After an easy […]

Kath and Therese want to take a moment to share some of WU’s recent mail.
First, from Writer Mama, Christina Katz, who’ll be doing an interview with us in the near future: the Writer Mama Back-to-School Giveaway begins on Monday (that’s today). There are a HUGE number of writerly books in this contest. The giveaway list […]

Blogger and WU reader LJ Cohen has created an ingenious method of organizing information that’s embeddable into your wip — and not a post-it or scribbled napkin in sight — called TiddlyWikiWrite. In part one of her two-part series on TiddlyWikiWrite, Lisa described what a wiki was and how writers can use them to corral […]

Kath here. As part of my ongoing effort to find the perfect way to organize a mess when it comes to notes and research, I asked blogger Lisa Janice Cohen if she would share her organizing tool, TiddlyWikiWrite, and I was thrilled when she agreed.  Lisa (left) created TiddlyWikiWrite out of an existing wiki platform (ingenious) […]

As I write this, my bags are packed and ready to go. In about two hours, I’ll be heading for Australia, and one of my goals is to improve my photography. I’ve studied the art over the years, in high school and then college and then a little more later. A […]

I’m currently in NYC! Today I meet my superhero agent, Elisabeth Weed, and yesterday I met my fabulous new editor, Sarah Knight. I’ll tell you more about these meetings when I get back home. For now, I wanted to share an idea I had with you, something that occurred to me while straightening my desk […]