Anne R. Allen's Blog... with Ruth Harris
Writing about writing. Mostly.
by Anne R. Allen One of our most popular posts in recent years has been a guest post from mystery author Sue McGinty. She wrote about Hometown Marketing, and the importance of getting our books known in our own communities. It helps if you’ve written those books with that community in mind. Not just to […]
Not every first novel is a practice novel. by Anne R. Allen It’s a sad truth that most first novels never see print. Editors call them “practice novels.” They make up a good portion of agents’ slush piles, and if you self-publish, they’re unlikely to sell. On her Bad Girl Comedy blog this week, author […]
Peggy Cass as “Agnes Gooch,” a memorable character name by Anne R. Allen “Agnes Gooch,” “Mr. McCawber,” “Albus Dumbledore”: memorable names of memorable characters. How can writers come up with character names that readers will never forget? In his painfully funny 2006 book, Famous Writing School, a Novel, Stephen Carter’s writing teacher-protagonist advises his students to […]
Start your novel any way you want when you write your first draft, but keep your reader in mind when you edit. by Anne R. Allen There are as many ways to start your novel as there are writers, so be aware that these are not hard and fast rules. But newbies tend to fall […]
A social media executor can keep you from haunting the Internet forever by Anne R. Allen One of my blogger friends died last week. Ann Calhoun was a regular commenter here from the beginning and often gave me suggestions for blog topics (she commented as “Churadogs”.) Her own blog, Calhoun’s Cannons, grew out of a local newspaper […]
by Anne R. Allen I often run into new writers who want to be reassured they have talent. They sometimes ask me to read some fledgling work in hopes I’ll pronounce them “talented.”I always decline. (A wise author never goes there.) It’s not simply that I can’t fit one more thing into my already […]
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 Anne R. Allen If you “won” at NaNo, and you’re madly editing that manuscript, you’re probably thinking about how you’re going to go about sending it into the marketplace.Or you may have spent years working on a manuscript and one of your New Year’s resolutions will be to get it published.Whether you’re going to […]
By Anne R. Allen This is usually Ruth’s week to post, but she’s busy proofing galleys of her much-anticipated new novel The Chanel Caper. And next weekend, I’ll be busy teaching THE TECH-SAVVY AUTHOR workshop. So we switched. On March 3rd, look for Ruth’s post on why we like a tough, flinty heroine. OK, […]
by Anne R. Allen Maybe you’ve got a novel finished and you’ve been sending out queries. Lots. And you’re getting rejections. Lots. Or worse, that slow disappointment of no response at all. Or maybe you write short fiction and poetry and you’ve got a bunch of pieces you’ve been sending out to contests and […]
by Anne R. Allen NEVER GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAMS! Recently, my publisher, MWiDP, relaunched Shirley S. Allen’s cozy mystery, ACADEMIC BODY as an ebook. Sales had slowed for the print version published by Mainly Murder Press in 2010, but Mark Williams saw my ad for the book on this blog, read it and loved […]
