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“When am I going to stop feeling so bad about rejecting people?” My husband muted the football game. “What?” “When am I going to get thicker skin? When is it going to get easier for me to tell people no?” Okay, I probably should’ve waited until half-time to get into this conversation. But I’d written…

By now most people either know how to use Twitter, or they hate the whole idea of it and have sworn to never go over to the dark side. Wherever you stand, I’m not going to try to change your mind. But if you’re using Twitter, I have a couple of helpful hints, based on…

Since you’re reading this blog, I assume you’re probably pretty good at knowing your way around the computer. This is a very good thing! It’s vitally important that you’re comfortable with technology. You should also know that the standard program used by publishers in working with manuscripts is Microsoft Word. I don’t want to hear…

But You Don’t Have an Agent There are numerous situations in which you may find yourself unagented but having an offer from a publisher. A nice situation, to be sure! It may happen because you met an editor face-to-face at a conference, or through a referral. In any case, at this point the question will…

I just finished reading The Writing Circle by Corinne Demas (or as one of my friends called it, Literary People Behaving Badly). I loved the book! It’s perfect for writers, particularly anyone who’s ever been part of a writers’ critique group. The author gets inside all these different writers’ heads, deconstructing their jealousies and insecurities,…

I used to be one of those people who says things like, “Oh, I only get about five hours of sleep a night. That’s all I need.” Or, “I just don’t have the luxury of going to the gym. I’m way too busy.” But over the last few years, I’ve come to the realization that…

Rejection is part of the process of pursuing publishing, and I had to give my share of it at the writers’ conference this weekend. But lest you think rejection ends once you get through the query stage… just wait till you have a published book! Below are some book-reviewer quotes that I found compiled on…

Right now I’m at the conference of the South Carolina Writers Workshop. We’re slumming it at the Hilton Myrtle Beach Resort. It’s a rough gig, I tell ya. One of the big draws for me this year was the keynote speaker, author Joshilyn Jackson. I’m a huge fan of southern fiction in general, and I’ve…

Last week, my friend Wendy Lawton, an agent at Books & Such, wrote a series of posts that took a great deal of courage. She said a lot of things I’ve been trying to figure out how to say here on my own blog, but she did it first and said it better than I…

Right now I’m putting together some tools that will help me be more effective at long-range planning with my clients. I want to make sure my vision for the client’s writing career matches their own vision, and that together, we intentionally work towards the client’s long-term goals and dreams (as opposed to a book-by-book “let’s…

Never take a person’s dignity; it is worth everything to them, and nothing to you. ~Frank Barron I’ve been reading a terrific book, The Power of a Positive No. It’s by William Ury, one of the world’s most talented negotiators and author of several books including the negotiator’s bible, Getting to Yes. One of the…

(Encore presentation of a previous post.)There comes a time in every agent’s life when one of their clients needs to move on. Yep. We all get fired by an author at some point. It isn’t pleasant, but it’s a reality in business. What are some reasons writers opt to terminate their agency relationship? I think…

A Woman Reading by Claude Monet, 1872Everyone knows that agents and editors are reading practically all the time. We read queries and manuscripts of people hoping to secure representation, we read the manuscripts of our clients, and we read as many published books as possible – partly because we love reading, and partly because we…

of The Forest For the Trees by Betsy Lerner THANKS for entering the drawing, and for all your great tidbits of writing advice! If your name is NOT listed below, here’s where you can buy the book:Buy on AmazonBuy on Barnes and Noble I used a random number generator on Random.org and from that, drew…