A Writer’s Life

I just came from ACFW, the annual conference of American Christian Fiction Writers. It’s a large and terrific writers conference, with top notch writing courses and plenty of opportunity for networking. This year there were something like 540 writers attending, and 60 faculty and staff. Donald Maass gave an all-day seminar on opening day, and…

**Please note, blog contest ends tonight! See last Friday’s post for details. You may have noticed from some of my posts that sometimes this job gets a little frustrating (like any job). If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile or if you follow me on Twitter, you know I love my job, so that’s…

On my August 21 post about publishing myths, David commented: “The thing that worries me the most is that a vast majority of stories about finding agents I hear or read about in blogs, message boards, or authors’ websites involve some lucky break or some connection.” That’s a good point, David. Like many businesses, publishing…

An anonymous commenter on my blog Friday wrote: “I hear the data about how few authors get published. But then I read so many published books that are simply awful.” Many other blog readers have shared this perspective in the past, including a few of yesterday’s commenters. You know what? Sometimes I turn on the…

I’ve had a pretty good summer as far as book deals go. In the last week I wrapped up three exciting deals that I’ll tell you about when the contracts are signed. Just prior to that, Kathi Lipp (author of The Husband Project) signed on with Harvest House for two more books (making a total…

People frequently ask me whether they should invest the time and money to go to a writers’ conference. In my opinion, it can be a valuable experience whether you’re agented or not, published or not. But especially if you’re neither. I could write pages and pages about the value of a conference, but in the…

Over the weekend, Janet Reid wrote a blog post called Exclusives STINK. It was great, and I’m unashamedly stealing her wording because I can’t think of a better way to say this. Rejection STINKS. I suppose I could also say Rejection Stings. That’s true, too. I have a whole lot of projects out on submission.…

I’ve spent the last several days at ICRS in Denver and like most everyone who attended, I’m exhausted! It’s just like any event where you’re “on” non-stop for 13 hours a day. While it can be a blast, it wears you out! I’ll spend the next few days compiling my notes from all my meetings…

Yesterday I talked about the importance of working on your writing as opposed to spending time on social networking. This is crucial if you’re an unpublished fiction writer. It seems I’ve been having this conversation with so many people lately… both authors and editors. It’s come up several times in my conversations with editors at…

So. Wow. Did you see how many people commented on Friday’s post? And did you see how longwinded eloquent everyone was? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you all LOVE giving your opinions about social networking! So the upshot is: some of us love it, some of us hate it, many of us are…