Pancakes for dinner sounds really good.

Thanks for the post!

First projects are a learning experience and second projects frequently fail due to overconfidence. By the time we get to the third project we not only have the experience of the two previous projects, but our level of humility is closer to were it should be.

Richard – I’ve give some thought to this idea of a writer’s apprenticeship period. I think that we all pay our dues, but we do so in diverse ways. We have to pay our dues in life experience to be able to write in our chosen genres. We also have to enter some kind of apprenticeship in our craft. I have friends who are currently writing their way through their apprenticeship, as you describe. I have other friends who went to grad school in creative writing or in literature and paid their dues by study and massive amounts of reading. Either way, it’s seriously hard work, and worthy of respect. What matters is knowing how you did your own apprenticeship, so you can recognize whether you may have apprentice-level work that you shouldn’t submit.

I was approached by an agency and had the, “Oh yeah, we’ll represent you on anything….we’ll try and sell it…..” attitude. After further investigation, I chose not to go that route.

One of the things I’ve been looking at while evaluating potential agents is honest communication. If a book is going to make me look bad, I want an agent who’s going to say, “Dan, you don’t want to put this out there, because…(insert reason here.)” If I’ve written something that reeks, I’d rather hear about it from an agent than from an editor.

Of course, honesty doesn’t have to mean ugliness. To quote one old sage I’ve known, “you can call a spade a spade without calling it a darned old shovel.” 🙂

D.

I do plan, however, to inflict it upon my children who will dispose of my files someday. Tee, hee.

It’s hard to be objective after pouring your heart and soul into a project – that’s why it’s a great thing to have another partner look at the project with a fresh eye.