Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
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 The brilliant columnist/philosopher/literary outlaw Michael Ventura famously said the most important talent required of a writer is the ability to work alone. In his 1993 Sun article, The Talent of the Room , Ventura wrote, “Writing is something you do alone in a room. It’s the most important thing to remember if you want to be a writer….Unless you […]
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 Ever get the “OMG I’m-not-really-a-writer, why-am-I-kidding-myself” blues? Agent Nathan Bransford calls them the “Am-I-Crazies.” Most of us have been there. Rejections are pouring in. Your WIP is stalled. Your BFF has refused to listen to one more word about the unfairness of the publishing industry. After a sleepless, agonizing night, […]
by Anne R. Allen A lot of writers—even established ones—are taking a second look at self-publishing right now. Only a couple of years ago, self-publishing—especially for memoir and fiction—was equated with the grumpy-geezer rants and bored-housewife fantasies of “vanity publishing.”. Serious writers were told self-publishing was the direct route to a dead-on-arrival career. Predatory outfits […]
by Anne R. Allen Are you a lurker who reads publishing blogs but doesn’t comment or create your own blog? Do you fail to Tweet or network on Facebook? Good for you! You’re educating yourself about the publishing business without wasting precious writing time. Don’t let anybody pressure you into changing your ways until […]
by Anne R. Allen I’ve had a lot of great responses to last week’s post about dealing with less-than-helpful criticism from beta readers and critique groups. I think my favorite was a Steinbeck quote offered by freelance editor (and great blogger) Victoria Mixon: “I am never shy about it when a professional is doing […]
by Anne R. Allen Finding a beta reader or critique group is essential to any writer’s development. We can’t write in a vacuum. Nobody ever learned to be a good writer holed up in an attic with no one to review his work but the cat. (Cats can be so cruel.) Rachelle Gardner ran […]
by Anne R. Allen I’ve been looking over some of my much-rejected early novels recently and discovered they have something in common with a lot of other unpublished fiction: way too much dialogue. They’re too LOUD. The characters need to shut up already and get on with the story. And yet, in all the […]
by Anne R. Allen In his painfully funny 2006 book, Famous Writing School, a Novel, Stephen Carter’s writing teacher-protagonist advises his students to seek character names in the obituaries. But although Carter’s bumbling protagonist offers mostly dubious advice, that tip is a keeper. Obits are full of great names. I keep a list in a […]
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. […]
