Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Anne R. Allen Most writers have been picturing it since we started scribbling ideas for our first novel. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel, the goal that keeps us slogging along, the Holy Grail of our writing journey— It’s your BIG BOOK LAUNCH PARTY!! We’ve watched the scene in so many […]
by Ruth Harris Romance with a side of horror? Happens in real life—oy!—but not such a hot idea in fiction. Cozy mystery with a soupçon of blood and gore? Only if you want readers coming after you with shoulder-fired missiles. Sci-fi in a gauzy, vintage-y mood? Not unless you want to find an IED in […]
by Anne R. Allen I recently heard from a writer who said she felt disrespected by her writing group. They were all working on novels and memoir and didn’t take her short fiction work seriously.I saw another writer on Google Plus asking for help because his work kept coming in at around 40 pages—like that […]
by Ruth Harris You’ve written a book! Or: You’ve started the first draft. You’ve finished the first draft. You’re waiting for your editor’s comments. You’re thinking about writing a book. You’ve got a great idea for a book. You’re making notes for a book. You’re outlining a book. No matter what stage you’re in, […]
by Anne R. Allen Writers know we need a “platform” these days. That means we need to be on Twitter and FaceBook and Google+ and LinkedIn and Pinterest and Tumblr and have a blog with a ton of followers and get 100s of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and drive ourselves batty keeping up […]
This week I’m totally jazzed to host my agent, Pam Van Hylckama Vlieg (aka Pam Howell) . She’s one of the new breed of agents at the cutting-edge literary agency, Foreword Literary, founded by “Agent Savant” Laurie McLean. Pam represents the book I wrote with Catherine Ryan Hyde, How to Be a Writer in the E-Age: […]
by Anne R. Allen Platform. It’s a scary word to a lot of authors. Some of us obsess too much about it and waste time on pointless overkill. (More about how to skip the time-wasting stuff in my post, 7 Ways Authors Waste Time Building Platform.) But others ignore it entirely, but that’s not smart. The […]
by Ruth Harris You’re happy, even delirious. You’ve finished your first draft! Then you read it. OMG, you think, did I write that?Yes, you did. 🙂 It stinks. It sucks. It’s so rancid it threatens to warp the time-space continuum. Think you’re alone? Here’s Hugh Howey in a blog post: “I suck at writing. Watching a rough […]
by Anne R. Allen Two weeks ago I wrote a post listing some of the bad writing advice that can stand in the way of launching a successful publishing career. But I had too much to run in one post, plus I got some great suggestions from readers in the comments. So this week we have […]
Writer’s Toolkit #5 by Ruth Harris A note from Anne: This is the 300th post on this blog, and the 40th for Ruth Harris! Ruth graciously agreed to join my blog in August of 2011, right after my out-of-print comic thriller Food of Love was accepted for re-publication by Popcorn Press. I was about to embark […]
by Anne R. Allen A couple of weeks ago, when I wrote a post about writing as a hobby as opposed to a profession (hint: they’re both good choices), I got a couple of comments from new writers who were discouraged to read how much work and dedication it takes to become a professional writer. They […]
A lot of bookish blogs have posted predictions for 2014. But I’m only making one prediction for the new year: writers will need to start thinking globally. Growth of ebook sales in the US and UK has slowed, but the markets abroad are growing fast. Eoin Purcell wrote in the Irish Times last week: “Ebooks outside of the US […]
Liza Perrat contacted me a few months ago, asking for permission to quote me in a book about her author collective, Triskele Books. I’ve been fascinated by the idea of authors forming their own publishing companies, so I asked if she’d like to guest post for us. I was eager to hear more about her […]
Anne R Allen’s Blog With Ruth Harris