Saturday, August 4, 2012

First Novel Tips

Here are some articles that might be of interest to aspiring authors.

Justine Larbalestier wrote about First Novel Advances a few years ago here.

Over at Grammar Girl, there's so tips on how to write your first novel. You can check out other similar articles here and here and here. Then you can check out author Jodi Meadows post about writing a first draft.

Maureen Johnson has quite a few posts on becoming a writer, like How Can You Afford to be a Writer and The Curse of the Similar Thing. I highly recommend reading her Auntie MJ posts, because she answers a great variety of questions about the writing process.

Here's a little snippet of and inteview of Nova Ren Suma over on Joëlle Anthony's blog where she talks a bit about her selling Dani Noir without an agent.
"What’s the coolest writing-thing that’s happened to you since you sold your first book?
 I sold DANI NOIR, my first book, on my own without an agent—by choice. Honestly, since I’d already gone through the whole agent-search thing with a previous literary fiction manuscript for adults, and got a few of those heartbreaking too-close-but-no-cigar phone calls that seemed to hurt worse than the little paper slips, I’d told myself I did not need an agent… EVER. That I’d be perfectly fine living my whole life without a literary agent and so there. Of course that was all a lie because I really, really wanted one. So the coolest writing thing that happened to me since selling DANI NOIR was when I got up the courage to start querying agents with my next manuscript, a YA novel this time, called IMAGINARY GIRLS… and I actually got some yeses. It felt like a dream. I ended up not just with a real-live literary agent but with the exact right agent for me, which goes to show that timing is everything and sometimes it’s worth it to wait till the perfect moment—and the perfect manuscript. And since you and I share the same stellar agent, you know how worthwhile the wait was!"

I also love Tamora Pierce's FAQ page where she answered a lot of questions about writing and finding an agent and stuff like that.

Jackson Pearce has a bunch of Youtube novels about writing, which you can check out some (outlining), (writing a book), (naming book characters) and more!

If you have more questions, might I suggest checking out Jackson Pearce's Liveshow on Tuesdays at 8pm est. She will often answer questions about writing and publishing and all that groovy stuff.

"Writing is an art, publishing is a business." Elizabeth Scott to Kody Keplinger

2 comments:

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    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My first tip would be to read blogs and articles and books that are similar to what you plan on writing. This will help structure your blog posts by sort of mimicking what you see.
      Another tip would be to write what you are passionate about. The key to a successful blog is really caring about what you're saying.
      Lastly, just do it. It may take more than a year for you to get things down and maybe even longer. The more you do it though, the better you will get at it.
      Good luck :)

      Delete

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