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Nov30
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A word from your humble narrator: Every few months, in the interest of improving my service, I like to urge my readers to subscribe to my blog. It's easier than checking for updates. Dig it. I'll see you in your email... I urge you to look up in the upper right hand corner of this blog, there is a very special option, "Enter email below to subscribe." Sign up today and receive two free writing posts a day, delivered personally by a computer program from me to you. No spam, no distractions, just posts.
Don't waste anymore time clicking on my site. I'll send you my posts instead. It's a win-win situation. Think about it as a holiday present for both of us--you get more writing advice and I get your support!
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Nov30
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"The sun was like a huge fifty-cent piece that someone had poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match and said, 'Here, hold this while I go get a newspaper,' and put the coin in my hand, but...
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"This year I'm again writing a historical novel, but this time I'm doing it with absolutely no prior research, writing on the fly in an effort to get the basic story into a full rough draft ... Once finished with...
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Nov29
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"Samuel Lightburn had been present for the birthing of many animals. He had witnessed the impossible feats of nature many times, had seen all strength from a beast draining into one part of its body, accumulating there, and using...
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I spend too much time speculating what the next generation of book promotion will look like. Scarlett Thomas doesn't talk about it. She did it. This blogger and novelist built a friendly website for her brand new book, The End of...
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Nov28
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"The thing about writing is it's a passion, a pleasure and a compulsion, and yes some days are hard, but it's the best thing in the world and that mitigates much of the anxiety and worry, and it has...
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Sarah Hall could teach a Ph.D level class on the fine art of historical research.Over the course of her career she has written two novels in radically different) settings: 1930's Brooklyn in the novel The Electric Michaelangelo and 1930's rural...
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For fledgling writers without a strong base of readers, how well you tell stories to a crowd of strangers can be just as important as how you write your stories on paper. Tony D'Souza told me that he built his reading...
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Every great writer endured the terrible lifestyle of a fledgling writer before they wrote that first book, poem, or magazine article. The good folks over at Boingboing pointed me towards this excellent bit of fan fiction written by one of my...
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Nov27
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"In March the running water of the valley is bitter, acid cold, as snow on the fells begins to melt and is brought down over chilled rocks and icy beds. It has in it all the breaking soul of winter,...
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The Know More Media outsourcing blogger, BPO Tiger, just passed along a disturbing bit of information. There's no easy way to say it, I think we should just quote straight from the source: "Remote-control journalism is the scornful term...
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"We cannot ever hurt each other in here." That's the most reassuring thing a fledgling writer can hear in a writing community. Over at Newsvine, blogger Rwarner just opened up a friendly new Open Mic workshopping space for writers...
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Nov25
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As we recover from Thanksgiving feasts and the dull-mindedness of a four-day weekend, here's the best of what's around the writing blogosphere that I neglected to show you over the last two days... Ed Champion collects the reviews of...
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Nov22
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As I told you before, I spend way too much time keeping my writing music fresh. That's why I felt giddy when I discovered the band Rock Plaza Central yesterday. They combine everything I love in a gorgeous blend: storytelling,...
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If you are in the New York area, I've got a couple events for you--my Thanksgiving present for fledgling writers around here.I can't stress this enough: writing careers depend on community. The friends you make at an event like this...
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Nov21
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Television journalists don't hide behind news anchor desks anymore. My friend Marisa Buchanan is currently reporting in Africa for MSNBC. Following her network's push for more digital material, she's producing a whole array of content about a difficult story--including blog...
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Nov20
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What does a creative writing degree mean? Gordon Hurd, another Brooklyn-based writer, has helped me answer that question. His blog, After the MFA, guides fledgling writers through the realities of our strange profession.Today, he brought on a guest writer named Armand...
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Nov19
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Here's the best of what's around the writing blogosphere this chilly November day. My younger brother Matt has been traveling around Greece as part of a study abroad program for his university. The little bugger has managed to see about...
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Nov18
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The next generation of book advertisements have arrived, the Wall Street Journal reports. Blockbuster scribe Michael Crichton's next thriller is about genetics company, and a sneakily-related website has cropped up with videos about creatures created by his fictional scientists-- everything...
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Nov17
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Flexible reporters like Xeni Jardin rule the writing game. She writes for countless magazines, but follows independent instincts on her personal blog. She just touched down in Guatemala, my favorite country in Central America. I lived there for two years,...
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If you tell most "serious" writers that you read at spoken word events, they'll probably think you're crazy or a failure. This week, I found a writer who used storytelling performance as a springboard for her career--a model for us...
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Nov16
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The mystery writing journalist Sarah Weinman just blogged (with a little prodding from her friends) about the major mystery novels she's appeared in. I kid you not, she makes cameos in books by Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, and Sparkle Hayter.Explore...
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"Kent had gone to Oshawa to work in a ski pole factory for the winter season and had left his two electric guitars, an amp, and a bag of clothes at our apartment in exchange for two cartons of cigarettes...
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Erika Dreifus loves her readers even more than I do.Just kidding. Seriously, nobody loves you more than I do. However, Dreifus--a graduate of the Five Easy Questions University--does something that I don't do. She DOUBLE-CHECKS all her old links to...
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Nov15
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I'd like to introduce you to Heather O'Neill, this week's featured writer. In this decidedly lo-fi video clip from KGB Bar in New York, O'Neill is reading about a young delinquent as he makes a silly (yet ominous) attempt to...
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Nov14
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"People gave you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween candy anymore. They said things like, 'If this were the Middle Ages, you'd be married and you'd own a farm with...
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Sometimes I can waste an entire weekend "preparing" to work on my novel. I'll futz around, read my book, or watch movies, hoping to put my head in that writing frame of my mind.Truth is, there is NOTHING you can...
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How do you decide if your characters swear? If they swear, how do you write it? These questions have haunted writers for centuries. Despite the fact that novelist can write whatever the **** they want, many journalists still worry...
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Nov13
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Over five years ago, Mark Z. Danielewski published the sprawling novel, House of Leaves. Sifting through all the footnotes, fonts, and obsessive passages buried in that book, I felt like I discovered a whole new country.Hardly anybody can make me...
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"I had a ludicrous childhood, but I feel that I was able to profit from a lot of the idiotic and unfortunate things that happened to me by turning them into fiction. I feel in that way that I cheated...
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Continuing with our tireless support of National Novel Writing Month writers, here's a writing toolkit straight from NPR. That artsy-craftsy news organization asked writers with three simple, practical questions: How do you schedule writing time? How do you beat writers'...
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This week, I'm featuring an exclusive Five Easy Questions interview with Heather O'Neill, the author of Lullabies for Little Criminals. Here's the short and sweet biography from her publisher: "Heather O'Neill is a contributor to This American Life, and her...
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Nov12
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On this rainy Sunday afternoon, I wanted to take a look back at what happened on The Publishing Spot this week...We discovered a goldmine of resources for freelancers over at About.com.First we hosted the 1,000,000th visitor to the Know More...
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Nov10
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As marketing blogs, pay-for-post, and spam blogs proliferate on the web, the difference between sharing and shilling is becoming murky.Our brave friend Copyblogger has plunged into the dodgy no man's land located between marketing and writing. No matter what you...
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If you're looking for weekend reading/holiday presents or a gift for your writing career, then Maud Newton has a great suggestion. She's been quoting from The Paris Review Interviews, a collection of conversations with some of the best writers that...
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Nov 9
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When About.com covers a subject, they COVER a subject. Newsvine blogger Sophistikat just alerted me to a new writing resource in the About.com family--the same writing team that includes one of The Publishing Spot's blogroll buddies, Ginny Wiehardt. Most recently...
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Earlier this year, we debated Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory--the idea that artistic production is moving away from blockbusters and towards niche markets. If you apply his ideas to publishing, some people think we will replace Stephen King-style mega-productions with...
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Nov 8
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Our favorite citizen journalism pioneer--Jay Rosen of the PressThink blog--helped launch a brand new visual project. If it succeeds, citizen journalists will have a whole new photo department to support them.With the Polling Place Photo Project, citizen photographers around the...
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You should listen when a book agent teaches you something. They understand this book business, and they are the gatekeepers-- carrying your book between the editor and you. I keep track of a few agents and websites on a daily...
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Nov 7
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Over at the web magazine Smith, Tate Hausman is writing about his amazing street efforts during Get Out the Vote Weekend. In 2004, I spent a lot of time covering the election for newspapers and magazines. Reading his prose, I...
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The good folks over at Galley Cat and Publishers Weekly have pooled their detective skills to unravel a literary mystery. Seems an under-recognized but critically acclaimed writer is writing, under a pseudonym, about life in a upscale New York school.Since...
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Last month, Newsvine writer Ardith created a huge list of ideas of how to create homegrown artistic communities. This idea stuck in my brain: "Organize a storytelling session for people of all ages to share personal tales at local bookstores,...
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Nov 6
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I was sitting here, grooving to some of my brand new writing music, when I stumbled across this crazy post at Know More Media (KMM)--the webby headquarters of my blog network. Turns out my blog has accidentally hosted both the...
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I've failed you!I completely missed the fact that the world's biggest e-book publishing challenge was happening right under my nose. I'm worried that some of my readers might have missed this wonderful opportunity too. Reader Bill Peschel alerted me that...
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What do you listen to when you write? That's one of the most important questions anybody can ask you about writing.I explained that the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion is my all-time favorite writing band. Even if I'm depressed, blocked or...
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As we long for another weekend, I wanted to refresh your memory on some of the content you may of missed last week at The Publishing Spot. Sit back, enjoy, and don't think too hard this Monday morning...We interviewed Sam...
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Nov 4
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My writing buddy Firsty gave some unothodox writing advice last week, urging fledgling writers to write in bars. At first, I thought his idea spelled drunken doom for my readers, but then I realized he had a point. Bars have...
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Nov 3
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After a week of publishing advice from Sam Douglas--an associate editor at Picador--we've saved the best for last. Today, he explains what a good book proposal looks like, helping you take that first step towards a nonfiction book.Picador has published...
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What do you listen to when you write? That's one of the most important questions anybody can ask you about writing.My friend Ryan Hudson just pounded out an essay about the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, my all-time favorite writing band....
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Over at the new Business 2.0 blog network, web editor Erick Schonfeld just wrote a frank assessment of the state of digital publishing and his corporation, mapping out the territory that we new authors need to explore. He reinforces two...
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Nov 2
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What do fiction editors like to read? Most fledgling writers would give an arm or a leg to know that before mailing their manuscript. Today, we find out what Sam Douglas--an associate editor at Picador--likes to read. His firm has...
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Here are the mini-lessons I learned from the writing blogosphere today...Novelist William Styron died today. The Elegant Variation gives a poignant wrap up of the writer's life and the blogged response to his death. His quality essay, complete with book...
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What's more important online: building a loyal community or grabbing as many readers as possible?That's what all web writers need to decide. Our buddy Steve Bryant just wrote an interesting essay about these two models of distribution, using two powerful...
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Making good on my promise to contest the heck out of you, here's a wacky new contest that lets writers write about their experiences in contests. I feel like I'm wandering around a hall of mirrors... Check out the rest of...
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Nov 1
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Here's a story for all the video storytellers in the audience. Steve Bryant, our resident web video expert, is hard at work attending conferences so you don't have to. Today, he's writing about the as-yet-untapped market for video search engines.That's...
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In this wacky world of writers, very few people end up exactly where they imagined they would end up in the beginning. I grew up thinking I'd be a private detective novelist and I ended up doing investigative reporting for...
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"It's still been an excellent experience -- it gave me the discipline to work on novels I never would have attempted otherwise, as well as bringing spontaneity to my writing when I might have otherwise gotten bogged down in research...
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