Tools and Craft

The Emerging Writers Network has an interview with author Ron Rash. Dan Wickett and Rash discuss a wide range of topics from the importance of place to water as theme, but it was this line that caught our attention (note how we skipped over the part where running trains good writers. . .we do not, as a rule, condone activity that involves sweat without a good cause): I believe deep, intense reading is crucial to being a good writer. Every good writer I know is a voracious reader, both in the classics and in contemporary fiction. I think you need […]

Okay, there is nothing new here. Honest. We were just amused as heck to see this on the Los Angeles Times Opinion page. Though, hmm, perhaps the placement was apropos. Setting aside our confusion, it strikes us there is a perfect plot for what we suspect will be the a recurring theme this summer: The Never-Ending Invasion of The Southern California Ants (coming soon to a freezer near you): The essence of Tragedy as a basic plot is that it shows us what happens when heroes and heroines pass under the spell of the dark power of the ego. Initially

We have just learned something awful…almost too awful to share. We cannot bring ourself to type the horrible words, so will let John Rickards do the dirty work for us: Crime is very formulaic, it’s true. Like any genre, it has its conventions, which more or less have to be obeyed to satisfy the reader. Firstly, for instance, there has to be a crime of some sort. At the end, you also need to have explained something of what happened, how and why, otherwise it feels horribly unresolved. And generally you have three different perspectives to tell your crime story

The long-running lawsuit by various authors against The New York Times and others regarding compensation for republication (or, we suppose in some cases, publication) of works in databases and online has been resolved. The issue, essentially, involved generating revenues from different distribution streams but not compensating authors for the use of their work. Yes, bad. Very bad. Interestingly, some of the terms of this settlement hew closely to something we covered last week: The writers’ representatives said that publishers including The New York Times Company; the Time Inc. unit of Time Warner; and Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The

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?

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

Tod Goldberg has, out of the goodness of his heart, compiled a brief (but comprehensive) list of things one should consider before submitting an application to an advanced writing course. He skips past all the typed, double-spaced advice in favor of Stuff You Can Use: If any of your dialogue regularly has the following tags, please consider a lower division course: interjected, retorted, perked, chided, elaborated, huffed, declared, admonished, clarified, ejaculated, defecated, spurted, sputtered, blustered, feigned, forced, exclaimed, condemned, purported, reacted, cautioned, cajoled, stated, lauded, or lambasted. Also, if you find yourself placing adverbs alongside any of those words —

Much as we love Edward Wyatt (and we do), we cannot help but leave his story about Glynn Wilson dropping his case against Kitty Kelley, et al, without a few questions. Maybe it’s because we don’t get it (we are admittedly slow, but that isn’t a crime, necessarily). Let us begin by noting that the Kansas City Star story (first link) suggests that the judge was about to rule that copyright law didn’t cover the story on the Internet; Wyatt’s story (second link) notes that, because the way the law is written, Wilson’s ability to recover damages was limited because

David Thayer of Collected Miscellany and The Untrained Eye discusses the stumbling block of many an author: The Working Title. Every author encounters this in some form or the other — Thayer explains the reason: It’s probably why writers have brains that are shaped differently from regular people; there are odd tissue formations where plot, character, subtext are imprisoned by the forces of sloth, distraction, infomercials and the nagging doubt of the resident skeptic in the Medulla Subplotgotta who wants to know the working title before he lifts a finger. Clearly he hasn’t stumbled on our clever solution: working title

Someone recently said that math is scary. It’s not — it’s just plays the heavy on TV. What should be scary is not understanding math as it relates to your business. In the past, we’ve talked about your royalty statement is real-life algebra (you know, the stuff you swore you’d never use). Mad Max Perkins of BookAngst 101 helpfully tracks the advance earn-out process using real numbers. All you have to do is substitute your royalty rate and advances into his formula. Easy as pie*. Mad Max also has a few thoughts on the importance of reviews and a grammar-bliss