Category Archives: Writing

The website QueryTracker maintains a database that includes 1.242 agents and 131 publishers to serve the needs of 41,610 members, of which 559 have reported success. Assuming each favorable outcome represents one member (I have no idea if any members have scored more than once), that’s a “smiley-face” rate of just over 13%. Historically, less than 2% of submitted material ever makes it into print, which means that as a group, members of the QueryTracker community do quite well for themselves. That’s the good news. Individual writers who haven’t yet reported success, however, pay far more attention to another statistic, … Continue reading →

In the previous Writer’s Desk logbook entry titled “The Bungalow Analogy,” I noted my intention to follow up with a personal concept linking the initial creative process of writing a novel with the editing necessary during subsequent revisions. My objective here is to suggest that ignoring (or being unaware of) the structural elements of modern fiction risks creating a shaky foundation and a less-than-sound story. As mentioned elsewhere in the Writer’s Desk logbook, the terminology used by writers when discussing their craft is often a source of less-than-effective communication. Unlike scientific terms that convey the same meaning no matter which … Continue reading →

In an earlier Writer’s Desk logbook post titled “Four Hats,” I offered a personal view of the writer’s journey to publication by figuratively defining four stages in terms of wearing a series of baseball caps with a single word embroidered on the front of each. This post expands that concept by concentrating on the first two, “Writer” and “Editor.” Assuming the use of a computer, the Writer is working with a screen in which the insertion point defines the boundary between the story so far and what is to come: text . . . insertion point . . .  and … Continue reading →

Writers seeking representation by a literary agent in the Age of the Internet have only to plop down at their computers to gain access to more information than most of us can assimilate. I’ve picked querytracker.net (QT) as my primary source, probably because it was the first site I spent much time with. Most sites have handy links to others, so branching out is only a click away from whatever “home” source you choose. QT has three primary functions: 1) provide a forum on which members help each other with the task of writing the best query letters they can; … Continue reading →

This afternoon I will suffer the slicing and dicing of scalpels in the autopsy procedure known as “roundtable” when fellow members of the Novel-in-Progress (NIP) group of Austin review 25 pages of Redline, the second of a planned series that begins with Pilot Error. I joined NIP in early 2003 when I felt that my progress in learning the craft had stagnated and I needed to break free from the confines of my writing desk. The following thoughts provide a personal retrospective of eight years in the group. Each writer has to determine whether a group serves a useful purpose. … Continue reading →

Where did the month of April go? I must have missed it, as evidenced by my query letter record, which indicates that I last submitted to an agent on March 29th. How in the world did that happen when I’d committed to sending out 3-5 queries per week? The answer is embedded in the insidious allure of fantasy. All it takes is a single thought about having two full manuscripts and a partial out based on earlier queries and it’s so easy to ponder what it would be like to get the phone call and be offered representation. Note that … Continue reading →

In the previous Writer’s Desk logbook entry, I wrote of a website dedicated to late-blooming novelists and the advantages of self-publishing, specifically through the ebook format. I also mentioned the blog of a literary-agent-turned-author who has maintained his penchant for blogging since departing Curtis-Brown to pursue other interests, such as publishing a middle-grade novel. Since that post, I have received from writer friends more links to blogs in which the topic of self-publishing versus traditional (or legacy) publishing is explored in detail. The purpose of this post is to offer a bit of personal reflection and relate how the current … Continue reading →

A member of one of my writers’ groups came across a blog devoted to, of all things, an “online community of late-blooming novelists.” I visited the site, did a bit of reading, and found it to be a valuable resource at this stage of my writing “career,” which most definitely began after the half-century mark. The blogger does a nice job of summarizing the reasons a person might bloom late as a writer of fiction. Most of them in one way or another describe my venture into the fascinating world of the novel, so his home page feels . . … Continue reading →

I didn’t make the quarter-finals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest because my 5,000-word excerpt failed to convince two “Vine Voice” reviewers that it deserved to be counted in the top 25%. What follows might be considered by some readers to be nothing more than a whine-a-thon that attacks the contest rather than accept the verdict with grace and equanimity. If you would honor me with the opportunity to alter that perception, please read on. While both reviewers thought the opening did a good job of introducing more questions than providing answers (which I assume is their way of … Continue reading →

This is where those of us who didn’t make it to the quarter-finals now reside.