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22 October 2018 - What's new

22 October 2018
  • ‘Whenever I talk to kids about writing and tell them it's the rewriting I enjoy most, they groan. I guess if you're in school, rewriting means copying your papers over. But to me, rewriting is the most exciting part of the process. When I'm rewriting, I feel most creative. I've got all the pieces to the puzzle and now I get to put them together. I go through four or five drafts of each book...' Judy Blume, author of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Wifey, Forever and 29 other books. Our Comment.
  • Are you thinking of submitting your book to an agent? Try our Finding an Agent page or Your Submission package. Our Submission critique service may also help, as it's essential to get your package into the best possible shape before you start submitting.
  • My Say gives writers a chance to air their views about writing and the writer's life. So we have Lynda Finn about the isolation of New Zealand writers and their problems with getting published, British author Eliza Graham, author of Playing with the Moon, on her route to publication and Zoe Jenny, who is Swiss, on writing in English and why it was liberating. Send us your contributions, ideally 200 to 400 words in length and of general interest. Please email them to us.
  • Our links: the enterprise of writing a book has to feel like walking into a cathedral, Writing Tips from Barbara Kingsolver; Indie publishing has gone through the roof, but what does this mean for you? Indie Author Beware; before becoming a writer in my 70s, I had several overlapping careers, now it's non-fiction writer, Writing books - my third career; and a Booker winner which was not expected to be a good seller, but now the total number of copies of Milkman in print is 180,000! Booker winner Milkman defies 'challenging' reputation to become bestseller | Books | The Guardian.
  • Do you want some help with your writing but don't quite know what you want - or even if you need any help? Are you a bit puzzled by the various services on offer, and not sure what to go for? Choosing a service can help you work out which service is right for you.
  • Advice for Writers is a really useful page which takes you into our archive and helps you explore our 6,500 pages of information for writers.
  • More links: sobering reading but an essential update, Brexit - what might change, what won't? The social media network's easy-to-use and relatively inexpensive advertising platform can be a useful resource for self-published authors, DIY: Twitter Ads for Indie Authors; offering the village of Mphako a collection of brand new, carefully selected books for the library, including many children's books, Bringing books where there were none; and reading great fiction is the first and most important thing I tell my students about writing, 5 Story Collections That Will Make You a Better Writer, Picked by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
  • If you need to get your material typed up, but can't face doing the job yourself, Typing manuscripts is a service for writers who have an old or handwritten manuscript or audio tapes, which need typing before they can proceed with reworking, submission or publication.
  • 'One of my standard - and fairly true - responses to the question as to how story ideas come to me is that story ideas only come to me for short stories. With longer fiction, it is a character (or characters) coming to visit, and I am then obliged to collaborate with him/her/it/them in creating the story.' Roger Zelazny in our Writers' Quotes.