“I try to leave out the parts that readers skip.” - Elmore Leonard

Unless you’re writing for personal reasons focus on the reader. Dull writing will not be read.

If you want to make sleeping pills or neural inhibitors go work for a pharmaceutical company. If you want to write then engage your reader.

One of the hardest things about writing is being able to do it consistently. Every writer knows the pain of dreaded “writer’s block,” which can strike at any time and for a variety of reasons. There’s no easy short-cut to get rid of it, of course, but there are ways you can get around those terrible periods where nothing you write turns out well and you lose all motivation.

One way is to just make a habit of writing a certain amount every day, no matter what. Many famous writers have used this method to ensure that they have a reasonable amount of output, and it can be especially helpful if you’re writing longer works that just seem to drag on and on. It can be difficult to keep going sometimes when you’ve been working on a novel for a month and realize you’re only about 1/5 of the way through it.

If you write every day, it will eventually become habit, and habit is a powerful tool in the human arsenal. The way our brains are wired means that things we do every day become second nature, until eventually it’s not a struggle to find the time to write out those words. Instead, it becomes just something you do, and something that you’ll account for in your daily schedule.

I’ve been struggling with this aspect of writing myself for quite a while. I started a novel last June, wrote 5000 words in a few days from the initial rush of excitement, and then… well, stopped. It sat untouched until December, when I wrote another 1500 words and stopped again. This May, I sat down and restarted the novel from scratch, rewriting what little beginning I’d done.

But this time, I did something different. I made myself write at least 500 words a day, with a preference for more. I told people I knew I was working on it, so that I’d have some kind of external motivation when they asked me how it was coming along. It’s now the end of June, and I have about 40,000 words with more every day.

I hope to finish by the end of August, which means I’ll have to churn out roughly 1000 words a day for the length I have in mind. It’s a tall order, but I’m hopeful. Now that I’ve been doing my daily 500 words for a while, it’s not nearly as hard. Even when I have periods (and I do still have them) where I hate every single word that goes from my pen to the paper, I still churn them out, where before I would get discouraged and quit. Habit is a powerful tool.

Some famous authors who wrote habitually:

• Virginia Woolf - 1000 words a day
• Kingsley Amis - 500 words each morning
• Isaac Asimov - Woke at 6am and wrote all day, sometimes until 1am
• Haruki Murakami - Writes 5-6 hours a day when working on a novel

Obviously, the more prolific writing schedules (Asimov, for instance, published over 500 books in his lifetime) are not for everybody. But even setting aside an hour a day, or setting a small word count goal, will help improve your output’s quantity. And since “practice makes perfect,” it’ll eventually improve your writing, as well!

Stewart B.
thestripedone

Finding an agent is like getting married. No one dates as much as they want to. Your calls are frequently not returned. However, in the end you only have to find one to make it work and to be successful.

Agents will generally respond to your query either by phone if they’re interested or by mail if they are not. The good news is that good news comes early. New authors who are looking for an agent their first novel will not be inundated by phone calls. Agents hear about book ideas every day, they are skeptical of almost every query that lands on their desk, including yours. Be positive and expect a limited number of responses. When you hear from an agent hit the turbo button to accelerate your novel. Don’t squander an agent’s interest in your novel by idling your time away.

When an agent calls be courteous, accommodating, and gracious. At this point you’re the nerdy kid with bad acne that just landed a date with the head cheerleader to homecoming. You need her much more than she needs you. At the same time don’t go overboard with excitement. Tell the agent you will send your proposal to in a few days after you have heard from any other interested parties. If you are fortunate enough to land more than one agent use your agent research to pick the best fit.

Decide which agent you want to use and act quickly. Don’t get frozen with fear and try to decipher the stars to pick the perfect agent. Use your research and common sense to pick a good agent and get her the information she needs.

Jacob

After you receive a critique we encourage you rate it. Rating the critique allows you to tell the reviewer how helpful, constructive, detailed, insightful, and understandable the review was. Most members consistently rate their reviews very well in all areas except insightfulness. Why is it hard to give an insightful critique?

To be insightful you have to apprehend the true nature of the work you are critiquing. You have to shrewdly penetrate the surface of the writing to perceive its inner workings while paying attention to the details. You have to boldly tell the author what is wrong with their writing while remaining tactful and intelligent. You have to work.

Nothing is so good or poor that you cannot insightfully help the author. It’s not easy to do! If you wanted ‘easy’ you would be in front of the TV wasting your time instead of putting pen to paper and stretching your imagination.

If you take the time required to insightfully analyze someone else’s writing you will greatly enhance your own writing abilities. Are you ready to improve by critiquing others? If so upload your writing now and get started.

Jacob

I wanted to add to my previous post about researching literary agents. I have found a few online resources that will help you capture the interest of a legitimate agent.

• Agent Query
  • One of the largest databases of literary agents
• Agent Research
  • This is the love connection of agent sites. They try to match you with the literary agent who is right for your work.
• Writer Beware
  • Warnings about literary fraud and other schemes, scams, and pitfalls that target writers

Jacob

Tearing someone’s work apart is easy. Telling someone they are a genius is easy. Providing a critique that helps an author improve is hard. I recommend following these guidelines when giving a critique.

1. Critique the writing not the person. Never say “you need to improve.”
2. Be useful. Your goal is to help the author improve.
3. Find something positive to say. If you start by saying something positive the reviewee will be open to accepting your help. Stupid? Perhaps. But this is a technique remarkably effective. If you can’t find anything positive to say then let the assigned review expire.
4. Be respectful. You don’t know how much time and effort someone has put into the work. Don’t assume what they have and have not done.
5. Be balanced. Don’t focus exclusively on the good or bad. Mix it up, it makes the critique easier to digest and more educational. I try to point out one positive thing for every five weakness I identify.
6. Pick your battles. If you think everything is terrible, then just pick one of two areas to focus the critique on. Your goal is to help the writer improve not teach him everything they need to know about writing.
7. Use it as an opportunity to learn and improve your own writing.
8. Don’t say “I love it” or “I hate it”. Both statements are too subjective to be useful.
9. Try to be objective. If you love vampire westerns and you have been asked to critique a sci-fi romance piece tell the author this is not your favorite gene to read. Then try to enjoy it.
10. Help the author being critiqued improve.

Do you want to have your writing critiqued? Join our online writing group and participate in the peer critique process with us.

Jacob

If you have contacts in the publishing world use them to get your work in front of an agent. If don’t have a contact then make a list of the top 10 agents you want to work with and send each one a customized query letter.

The query letter is a one page attention grabbing letter that provides an agent with enough information about you and your project to spark their interest. Agents shuffle through hundreds of pages of manuscripts and query letters each month. Don’t waste their time by sending them unsolicited boredom. Be concise and entertaining. Your query letter should follow this format:

1. Paragraph 1 - The Teaser
   Write the most attention grabbing sentence of your life. If you have walked on the moon or graduated at the top of our Ivey League class let them know. If you are like the rests of use, find a nice fit between who you are and what your book is about. For example, “I have been a health inspector for 25 years and I propose to write a book about what you are really paying for when you go out to eat.” The combination of who you are and the topic of you book needs to be a believable and provide a compelling reason to read more. Being able to match who you are with what you intend to write will generally be enough to get the agent to read the second paragraph.
2. Paragraph 2 - Enlarge the Idea
   Expound about what you intend to write about. Include examples and anecdotes that exemplify your idea. Show off your best material. Writing a good paragraph about your book gives the agent some confidence that you can actually write the book.
3. Paragraph 3 – You You You
   Now that you have shown you have a good idea for a book show that you are the best person to write it. The two most common ways to show you are the best is by describing relevant facts that show the connection between you and your idea, and by flexing academic credentials.
4. Paragraph 4 – Close It
   Tell the agent you are only showing your proposal to only one agent at a time, and only show you proposal to one agent at a time. Agents hate worrying that someone else is going to steal their gem. Tell the agent why you decided to send your query letter to them. Give them your phone number, email address, and home or work address.

Remember to make your query letter exciting. Use it to make the agents crave more of your writing. Do not exceed one page or your letter will go into the trash instead of in front of their eyes.

Do you want to have a chapter of your novel critiqued? Join Review Fuse and let us help you refine your novel.

Jacob

My team was down by one point. There were only 30 seconds left. Darren passed the ball to the giant forward I was guarding. He turned to shoot. I reached as high as I could and blocked his shot. My opponent wrangled the ball back into his hands and went up harder. I blocked his shot again

The testosterone filled forward turned and bellowed “you have freakishly long arms.”

Should I respond with my own verbal joust when insulted or I should I let it go? I chose to smile and reply “my wife does have a hard time finding long sleeve shirts that fit me!”

The game stopped. Everyone started laughing, its only basketball with my coworkers, who cares if the time runs out.

If you receive a peculiar critique of your work, let it go. It’s not worth raising your blood pressure over. Everyone has an opinion, everyone is allowed to share it, but you are responsible for choosing your response.

And yes, I do have longer than normal arms, but I don’t think they are freakishly long.

Jacob

Part 1 of this series - The Publishing Process

Part 2 of this series - Preparing a Proposal

Getting the attention of the right agent is hard. Many good books languish in purgatory because their author can’t get an agent to even glance at it. As the days tick by waiting for an agent to respond don’t be surprised if you lose some hair or can’t resist eating an entire box of chocolates in 5 minutes. Don’t get down on yourself, waiting for a stranger to tell you if your baby is cute or ugly is truly maddening.

You can increase your chances of landing an agent by getting to know the agent before introducing your work to them. Agents divide themselves into groups, the most obvious being fiction and non-fiction. Look for agents that love the kind of work you are writing. If you are writing a the History of Harvard don’t send it to an agent that has only represented romance novels with a western twist.

Get a copy or the Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino to help you get to know some agents. Use this book, or another one like it, to find out what books agents have represented in the past and what each agent expects in a query letter. Work smart and work hard and you will eventually get an agent to seriously consider your novel.

Do you want to discover what your peers think of your novel? Upload a chapter and let us critique it for you.

Jacob

See Part 1 of this series - The Publishing Process

Before you send your query letter to an agent prepare a proposal. Whoa! Why do I need a proposal before I send out query letters? If an agent follows up with you and you are not prepared, you lose your best chance at getting published. Nothing reeks of unprofessional and unorganized more than unpreparedness.

A proposal is a thorough outline of your book. The proposal should contain the following elements:

Overview

The first two to three pages should be summary of your idea for the book. Provide a synopsis of your fiction work or an explanation of the topics you intend to write about for a non-fiction piece.

Market

The next three to four pages should be a description of the audience your book will appeal to. This should include the age, education level, socio-economic status, and general reading habits your target audience.

Competition

Description other books that cover similar topics. Agents can easily discover if you’re omitting something so be honest. A crowded market is not necessarily a bad market. A crowd is one indication that people are making money in that market.

Author(s)

Briefly description yourself and the co-authors of the book. Brag and boast about yourself and the other authors. Convince the agent that you are the best author for this book. If you don’t convince the agent to support you, he will never convince a publishing house to back you.

Chapter Summaries

The majority of the proposal should be a chapter by chapter outline of the book. For fiction pieces include up to twenty pages of text from your book. For non-fiction provide a minimal outline summarizing the heart of each chapter.

Delivery

End with a short paragraph stating the length of and deadline for completing the book.

To learn more about preparing a proposal and how to get published I recommend reading either The Complete Starter Kit for Aspiring Writers or 100 Things Every Writer Needs to Know, both by Scott Edelstei.

Find out what your peers think about your book by uploading a chapter for critique.

Jacob