How do you find writing ideas?
A month ago when I visited the barbershop, I needed ideas for the magazine I’d just begun editing. But that wasn’t my reason for visiting. I needed a haircut.
In less than an hour I had my haircut. But I also had a great idea for an article for the Model A Ford magazine. How did I find it? By listening.
As my barber was finishing, another longtime client … Continue reading
What makes your cast memorable?
Saturday, I brought home a short piece of railroad track — because of a novelist.
The previous weekend, my wife and I spent time with a friend we knew because her late husband and I belonged to a book collectors’ group. As she works to find new homes for the items in his collection, she keeps discovering ones that leave her mystified.
There are good reasons to summarize your novel.
Yes, an agent or an editor really expects you, in your book proposal, to compress your novel, no matter its length, to only three pages.
Impossible? Welcome to the world of professional novelists.
A clients whose middle-grade novel I’d edited asked me to check her proposal before she sent it to an agent. All was going well until I … Continue reading