How many times have you fantasized about what blurbs will someday grace your book covers?
Embarrassed?
Okay, I’ll go first: countless. From the day I decided I was going to write a book, I was dreaming about what already-published authors might say about it. Spoiler: they’re all rave-reviews, and they’re all from the best in the business. (Hey, it’s my fantasy, okay?)
Early on in my writing life, I was isolated and novice enough to be totally uninhibited in this practice. I didn’t tell anyone, but I did make long lists of authors to approach for blurbs someday and imagine what they’d say. This is before I even finished writing the first book, mind you. This was back when I thought “difficult” was an apt enough descriptor for the journey to getting published. It’s almost charming for me to think about newbie me making those lists, crafting those faux blurbs, and thinking – even a teensy little bit – that some of them may someday actually happen.
Writers, here’s my challenge to you today: do this.
I’m not kidding. Do it right now. January is the perfect time for dreaming. Newbie or seasoned vet, zero books out or fifty, open a blank document or grab a notepad and, literally, make up the blurbs you wish your favorite authors would say about your books – written yet or not. I promise that you will never have to show this to another soul, so be shameless. Be fearless. Be ambitious and ridiculous and absolutely naïve. Run with it. Have a blast. Take as short or long as you want. Five minutes or an hour.
Seriously. Go do it, and then come back. Don’t look ahead yet. This is one of those exercises that won’t work right if you cheat. I’ll wait.
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Done? That was fun, wasn’t it? I don’t know about y’all, but Stephen King called my novel “terrifying,” Sharon Olds said my prose “sings with poetry,” Jack Ketchum proclaimed me “gutsy,” and Anne Rice called my book “a literary masterpiece.” [Read more…]
