The Writer’s Guide To Bread Baking
How writers and 6-year-olds can bake better bread than you buy in most grocery stores and bakeries.
Writing
Posts about writing, publishing, and screenwriting
Mac OS X Clipboard History
I don’t push my choice of writing tools on others. Well, okay, sometimes I do, but only if I have been using something for ten years and find it indispensable, and it’s open source. That would be Jumpcut.
Plain Text For Authors & Writers
Authors and writers of all stripes can learn a lot about creating and managing words from computer programmers, beginning with an appreciation for the simple, durable efficiencies of plain text.
Writer Uninterrupted
Most powerful people are on the manager’s schedule. It’s the schedule of command. But there’s another way of using time that’s common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.
Rejection, Thy Constant Companion
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. –Winston Churchill Most writers worry about rejection, not acceptance. Ray Bradbury says that the successful writer has to deal with both: “You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.” Several articles on this site (usually in the “For Writers” section) offer advice to aspiring writers who are trying to find agents or publishers. The most common question I’m asked (after “How do I get an agent?”) is: “How many query letters should I send out?” Or, “I found an agent willing to represent me, but she has submitted my manuscript to five (or eight, or twelve) publishers, with no takers. What should I do now?” Most writers start out asking “Is my writing any good?” but that inevitably leads to the question: “Is it good enough for me to get paid?” Literary agents are pretty good at spotting what sells, or at least what they can sell to an editor at any given time. Good agents know the marketplace. Writers, even working writers, don’t usually know what sells. Writers know how to make interesting sentences, some of which may sell, others […]