Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Anne R. Allen I often hear from new writers who are afraid their plots will be stolen if they talk about their books online or in critique groups. But I tell them to rest easy. Writers have a lot to be wary of these days—faux agents, bogus publishers, e-book pirates, content mills, James Frey—but […]
by Anne R. Allen I’m working on a couple of new projects—watch this space for exciting developments—so I’m running a New! Improved! version of an oldie-but-goodie. The original post garnered a visit and an approving nod from agent Janet Reid—the Query Shark herownself. ****** I belong to the generation of women who were told we […]
by Anne R. Allen I have a confession to make. My high school nickname was “Zombie.” The moniker was intended as an insult, but I loved it. I dressed in black, dyed my hair a dead ash color and wore ghastly white lipstick. I was goth before goth was cool. My senior year, my family […]
by Anne R. Allen Gearing up for NaNoWriMo? Good for you. You’ve always wanted to write a novel and next month you’re going to do it. But remember that most first novels never see print. Editors call them “practice novels.” Like any other profession, writing requires a long learning process. But there are a […]
As promised, here’s a guest blog from Janice Hardy. I’m a long-time fan of her blog, The Other Side of the Story. It’s always full of great, solid advice on craft and navigating the publishing business. When she said she was doing a blog tour to promote her new YA Fantasy book, Blue Fire, the […]
by Anne R. Allen “WTF?” Sez you. “Luxury? Getting daily rejections? Living in this mousehole on a diet of ramen and generic Froot Loops? While the few friends I have left laugh at my “delusions” of being a published writer? I’m supposed to #%&!ing enjoy this?” Well, yes. It’s the only time in your […]
by Anne R. Allen I’ve been dealing with an evil computer virus which first attacked my desktop and now seems to have killed my laptop dead. They’re both old machines, so it may be better to replace them than try to fix them, but now I’m worried my back-up drives may be infected too. […]
by Anne R. Allen I’ve had a number of people ask me that question in the last few months. There’s tons of info out here in Cyberia, but not everybody knows how to access it. And along with the good info, there’s plenty of bad—especially from predatory vanity publishers and bogus agents. So here are some […]
by Anne R. Allen When you’re a beginning writer, you’re likely to get bombarded with advice from all quarters—your family, your friends, your hairdresser, and of course that know-it-all guy at work. I don’t know why, but everybody who’s ever watched a few minutes of Oprah seems to think they know all about the […]
by Anne R. Allen After reading a bunch of agent blogs, submission guidelines, and tweets on the subject of our #queryfails, it occurred to me that most of the complaints can be boiled down to one major offense: querying too early. It’s not only about holding off until you can give that book an extra polish: […]
by Anne R. Allen Sometime during your query process, you’ll get a request for a partial or full manuscript (yay!) But this time it comes with a request for an exclusive read (not so yay.) It happened to me about a year ago. I really wanted to work with the agent, but it would […]
by Anne R. Allen You know how everybody keeps telling you to keep sending out those queries in spite of all the rejection? How it pays to persevere? And the only way to fail is to give up trying? Now I have proof they’re right. You’re never too old for success. My nearly 89-year-old […]
by Anne R. Allen First, completely off topic here, I’d like to say—after stumbling out of bed an hour early and changing the time on all 30 of my clocks, electronic devices and watches—that Daylight Savings Time is WAY more trouble than it used to be, because we all own so many time pieces. […]
