advice

Writers Write, Right?

May 6, 2018 By Jo Eberhardt

Writers write.

It’s such a staple of writing advice that it’s almost impossible to pinpoint where the quote comes from. When you start looking into writing quotes and statements, every successful author seems to have written some variation on the theme. Writers write. They don’t talk about writing, or think about writing, or wish they’d written — they write.

It’s simple, straightforward, and unarguable.

Someone who thinks about writing, or talks about writing, or wishes they were writing isn’t, well, writing. So they’re not a writer.

But…

The trouble with general advice is that there’s no nuance; no context. What does “writers write” actually mean, in the bigger picture of life?

[Read more…]

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Bad Writing Habits and How to Break Them

May 4, 2017 By Anna Elliott

My Short Pencil Collection, by Hugo Cardoso at Flickr

This is somewhat embarrassing to admit in public, but we’re all friends here at WU, so I’ll go ahead: not long ago, one of my books was being made into an audiobook, and during the recording process the producer pointed out how many times my characters nodded in agreement to something. I don’t have an exact count, but it was a kind of horrifying amount of nodding I had going on. Like, to the point where you would have thought I was confused as to whether I was writing about a bunch of bobble-head dolls or human beings. And this was after the book had been gone over by me multiple times, beta read, and read by my editor. Eeek.

I took another look, and probably 90 percent of those nods were entirely unnecessary, too. I cut them— thank goodness the book hadn’t been published yet— but it was an eye-opening experience, and one that reminded me that even 20+ books into my career as an author, I still have bad writing habits that I need to watch out for.
[Read more…]

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We Will Always Be Beginners

January 6, 2017 By Natalia Sylvester

Please join us in welcoming new contributor Natalia Sylvester to Writer Unboxed! Born in Lima, Peru, Natalia Sylvester came to the U.S. at age four. A former magazine editor, Natalia now works as a freelance writer in Austin, Texas and is a faculty member of the low-res MFA program at Regis University. Her articles have appeared in Latina Magazine, Writer’s Digest, The Writer, and NBCLatino.com. Her debut novel, CHASING THE SUN, was named Best Debut Book of 2014 by Latinidad and was chosen as a Book of the Month by the National Latino Book Club. Her second novel, EVERYONE CARRIES THEIR OWN WATER, will be published in 2018. You can connect with Natalia on Instagram here. Welcome to WU, Natalia!

On the first week of the new year and for my first post as a regular contributor (hello, WU fam!) it seems only fitting to write about beginnings.

But not new ones. Not the fresh starts or the “New Year, New Yous” messages we are so often bombarded with this time of year. Not the literal and figurative blank pages that are so exciting-we-will-finally-get-them-right-this-time-omg-no-pressure-right?!

Because really, we’ve been here before.

How many January’s have unfolded before us, ripe with potential?

How many first lines, first chapters, first drafts?

How many times has the progress in our Works-in-Progress marched forward, only for us to end up back at square one?

Each time we start over, we find we know (more or less) what to expect. We know what the air smells like in January. We recognize the late-afternoon pastel sky and grey-white trees. But despite being packaged in the familiar, what the year will bring is unknown to us.

And so it goes with our stories. The process will be similar in some ways to the last one—a blank page blossoming into a draft that will be edited, and rewritten, and reworked. But we won’t really know what a story demands of us until it becomes what it’s meant to become.

We are all in different places in our paths, and yet, we will always be beginners.

Starting Over is Still Starting

I’ve been reminded of this countless times in my own writing and publishing journey:

When I signed with my first agent and the book didn’t sell, and I had to start over and write a new one. Faced with that new beginning, I was heartbroken, but once I got back to the writing I recognized that new story for what it was: a new source of hope. (It became my debut, but not my first, novel.)

When, years later, my agent submitted a revised version of that unsold novel to the publisher that had acquired Chasing the Sun, and they turned it down. That rejection, no matter that it wasn’t the first time I’d gotten it, hurt as much as a fresh wound.

When I finally moved on and wrote what I hoped would be my second published novel, only to learn that my agent and I had different visions for the story. After months of trying to make the partnership work, we parted amicably and I began querying agents again. [Read more…]

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Are Libraries the New Bookstores?

June 7, 2016 By Guest

NYC Public Library photo by Andrew E. Larsen

Please welcome return guest Martha Conway! Martha’s first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award, and her novel Thieving Forest won the North American Book Award for Historical Fiction. Her short fiction has been published in the Iowa Review, Carolina Quarterly, Folio, and other journals, and she teaches creative writing for Stanford University’s Online Writers Studio and UC Berkeley Extension. Martha grew up in northern Ohio and now lives in San Francisco. Her latest novel is Sugarland.

I love libraries, and I was excited when a number of librarians in Ohio asked me if I would hold a reading at their library. Later I realized that my library tour had some advantages over a traditional bookstore tour, which I thought other authors might want to know about.

Connect with Martha on Facebook and Twitter.

Are Libraries the New Bookstores?

Last year I was about halfway through my book tour in Ohio when I noticed something strange: I had not yet laid eyes on a bookstore.

I was traveling with my father and my sister through northwest Ohio. My novel Thieving Forest, which prompted the tour, took place in this area in 1806, when it was known as the Great Black Swamp. Today the swamp is mostly drained except for a few state parks and forests, and what has taken its place is farmland. Miles and miles of farmland.

“Hey, have you noticed there are no bookstores anywhere?” I asked my sister.

She said, “But there are a lot of libraries.”

That was a good thing, since I was on a book tour of libraries—eight of them. Every reading I held except for one (there’s always one) was extremely well attended with an audience full of avid readers. They had interesting questions, insightful comments, and we always engaged in a lively discussion. It was every writer’s dream. And then, after each reading, my sister and I sold my books—at a discount, since there wasn’t a bookstore’s cut to consider. The readers were happy and I was happy, too.

It turns out that just because there were no bookstores didn’t mean there were no readers. They were all at the libraries.

I love bookstores, but I have an even deeper attachment to libraries that began in childhood. Like most compulsive readers, my branch library was my second home. After I read From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, I fantasized about running away like the two siblings in the book, only instead of living in a museum as these characters had, I wanted to live in my library. [Read more…]

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Daydream Your Way To A Better Story

February 28, 2016 By Guest

Please welcome Marin Thomas to Writer Unboxed. Marin writes Women’s Fiction for Berkley/NAL and western romances for Harlequin books. To date she has contracted over 35 projects for Harlequin. Her first women’s fiction novel, The Promise of Forgiveness, will release next month.

Marin grew up in Janesville, Wisconsin, and attended college at the University of Arizona where she played basketball for the Lady Wildcats and earned a B.A. in Radio-TV. Following graduation she married her college sweetheart in a five-minute ceremony at the historical Little Chapel of the West in Las Vegas. Marin and her husband are recent empty nesters and currently live in Houston, Texas, where she spends her free time junk hunting and researching her next ghost tour.

Connect with Marin on Twitter, on Facebook, on Amazon, and on Goodreads.

Daydream Your Way To A Better Story

How many times have you heard authors, agents, editors, and writing coaches tell you that you should write what you know?

Maybe not.

If we only write about what we know, this world would lose out on some pretty amazing works of fiction. I’m a prime example of writing what I don’t know and being relatively successful at it. I’m not talking about becoming rich off my books—I’d have better luck taking my chances on a lottery ticket. I’m talking about staying in contract.

I sold my first book with Harlequin in 2004 and to date I’ve written over 35 projects for them (books, online reads and novellas). Most recently, I branched into women’s fiction with my first sale to Berkley/NAL. I consider myself fortunate to having survived in this business for over a decade.

But here’s the kicker; my imagination, not what I know, has kept me employed all these years—that and help from my writing partner Google. [Read more…]