The Daily Square – April 9, 2006
Daily links from Medialoper: booksquare
On Proposal Writing
. . .it’s not enough to decide to write the history of package tourism, say, have your agent send a quick note to publishers and then watch the offers roll in. You have to produce an extensive proposal that not only conveys your enthusiasm for the project, but second guesses a whole range of complex questions a publisher may have about your idea. Pre-text: Original, funny, thrilling. And that’s just the proposal
AgentSpeak: Character-Based Literary Fiction
Agent Amy Rennert defines her taste as character-based literary fiction. This is a catch-phrase we actually get, thanks to her helpful examples (and, also, meeting Rennert at a conference). All she had to do was say “Anne Tyler”, and we got it. Why can’t everything in life be this easy? Also, for those of you who still like to debate the Agents Must Be New York Based/Agents Can Work Anywhere issue, here is a topic for thirty-second discussion (with time for rebuttal): Rennert’s home base is in the headlands of Marin, Calif., but her clients are sprinkled far and wide—from
Do Not Polish A Mess*
Gwenda Bond, she of Shaken & Stirred (there’s a woman who knows the right decision to make when encountering a novice bartender), wrote a few things last week that we meant to get back to because she touches on topics near and dear to our heart. First, she revels in the joy that is revision. We cannot express how much fun revising is. First drafts, for us, are like root canals from the patient’s perspective**. Revision is, well, like surgery performed by the most gifted of gifted surgeons. Yes, we’re feeling good about our work today, why do you ask?
On Modern Challenges
“I try not to play favorites with words because they get their feelings hurt.” [Erin McKean] In Land of Lexicons, Having the Last Word
Probably, We Commit Seven Of These Before Getting Out Of Bed
Jesse Kornbluth gets all worked up about grammar of all things. Like there’s a problem or something. Oh wait, there is a problem. Nevermind. We can buy into all of Kornbluth’s suggestions except the one about shining shoes — isn’t just easier to buy new ones? Hopefully (Not): Ten usage and grammar errors that could (or should) cripple a career
New Disguise
We are quite excited tonight — we have taken the first step toward our redesign: upgrading to WordPress 1.5. Now we can tackle the spam problem with even more vicious impunity. We will be spending the rest of the evening studying the WordPress manual to learn cool new tricks.