Blog Profile / Writer Unboxed
| URL : | http://writerunboxed.com/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Arts / Writing | |
| Posts on Regator: | 1768 | |
| Posts / Week: | 6.6 | |
| Archived Since: | April 2, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
Hacks for Hacks: The Basics of Author Branding
The highway to publication overflows with cars: luxury behemoths; sensible hybrids; nondescript, windowless vans with strange dents that protrude from the inside. Each bears the logo of the mechanic who brought it to life. You’ve built a car, too, with good mileage and a cherry spoiler. [Author’s note: The cars are a metaphor for your [...]
Empty
In the last couple of months, I released one book and wrote another in six weeks, start to finish. (No, I don’t usually write that fast; yes, I really, really wish I had the magic recipe to make novels come that quickly and easily all the time– if I ever figure that recipe out, I’ll [...]
Flog a Pro: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and literary agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), the first page has 16 or 17 lines. The challenge: does this narrative compel [...]
Six Core Issues Facing Writers Today
We are so excited that our guest today is consulting editor Alan Rinzler. Alan has edited and published Toni Morrison, Tom Robbins, Hunter S. Thompson, Jerzy Kosinski, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and others while working as Assistant Managing Editor at Simon & Schuster, Director of Trade Publishing at Bantam, west [...]
Sht My Mom Said
I’ve decided that I have a new quest as a writer. And I think it could help any other writers who dare to join me in this quest. Like any good quest, it has a mission statement: Say no to woe. (Pretty cool, huh? It even rhymes! Hey, I’m a writer, so the whole making-magic-with-words [...]
Rules and Tools
I once had a client tell me she’d heard that sentences should never run more than fifteen words. To this day I have no idea where that rule came from, though it was probably from someone who either had a short attention span or had read way too much Henry James. The rule is nonsense, [...]
In Between Worlds
Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved fairy tales, myths, legends, and fantasy. It’s something I responded to instinctively as a young reader, and something I took to easily as a young writer, too. In my imagination and my dreams, journeying to those magical worlds seemed to me as natural as breathing. Of course I [...]
TAKE 5: Erika Robuck and CALL ME ZELDA
Erika Robuck’s novel HEMINGWAY’S GIRL (NAL/Penguin) was selected as a Target Emerging Author pick, a Vero Beach Bestseller, and has been sold in two foreign markets to date. Her new novel, CALL ME ZELDA (NAL/Penguin), published on May 7, 2013, and looks to be another successful blend of history, mystery and compelling prose. The book begins [...]
Everything You Need to Know About the Retweet
If you’re new to Twitter, you’ve likely already seen retweeting come up. If you’re about to jump on the bandwagon, this is one of the first things you’ll need to learn. And even if you’re a seasoned tweep, the intricacies of the mysterious retweet can be confusing. Don’t you worry; I’m here to help. Let’s [...]
Clawing Our Way Back To The Creative Center
I have just come off one of the most amazing months of my entire life. April involved traveling nearly the entire month, including a two week book tour, teaching workshops and giving a keynote at a regional SCBWI conference, and attending the librarian paradise that is the Texas Library Association’s annual convention. It also involved [...]
Writers: Beware of Good Books, Unless . . .
Here’s a piece of advice writers are universally given: if you want to learn to write, read good books. As counterintuitive as it may sound, this is almost always bad advice. First, before your head explodes, I’m not suggesting that you don’t read good books. Heck, reading good books is probably a big part of [...]
That is the Question
First, a caveat: this is a post about the craft of fiction, and I don’t have the first clue about how to teach the craft of fiction. From my years as a high school English teacher, I could teach you how to write an essay on the symbolism found in The Great Gatsby. I could teach [...]
A Dash of Culture
We’re so pleased to bring you today’s guest–long-time WU community member and Reader Unboxed reviewer, Amy Sue Nathan. Amy lives and writes near Chicago where she hosts the popular blog, Women’s Fiction Writers. She has published articles in Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune and New York Times Online among many others. Amy is the proud mom of [...]
Take Five: M.J. Rose and SEDUCTION
M.J. Rose’s new novel, SEDUCTION, is out tomorrow. It’s an Indie Next List pick, and has garnered fantastic reviews. Here are just a few: “The 1843 drowning death of Victor Hugo’s beloved eldest daughter, Didine, provides the catalyst for Rose’s well-crafted paranormal novel of suspense. Show More Summary
On Rejection and Beyond
Somebody will tell you no. It’s going to happen. It has probably happened already. It might happen today, or tomorrow, or every day next week and then some. Maybe it happened five minutes ago and the pain is still searingly fresh, or maybe it’s on its way, looming dark and ugly on the horizon, five [...]
Win-Win: Promotional Opportunities for Writers through the Brenda Novak Auction for Diabetes Research
Back in December we received a note from author Kim Boykin, whose debut novel The Wisdom of Hair was set to release in March. We book WU guest slots far in advance, and had to let her know that we would’t be able to offer anything in March, however something Kim said to us sparked [...]
Comic Caption Challenge: Book Characters At A Bar (plus my exciting book news!)
Any caption suggestions? Please post below in the comments section – please post one caption at a time, and let someone else post a comment before posting another. Vote for the caption(s) you like by clicking on “Like.” Caption suggestion with the most Likes by Sat. May 18th gets a selection of writer-focused greeting cards. [...]
What I Learned from Thomas Edison and Steven Soderbergh and How it Applies to Novelists
On a recent flight to Dallas, I read a short biography of Thomas Edison put out by Time Magazine that I’d bought at an airport kiosk. I learned that Edison’s first invention was a commercial failure. He invented a vote tabulator so that votes could be counted efficiently and quickly. When he took the invention [...]
Take a Punctuation Mark Out to Lunch
Today’s guest is business writer and editor Tom Bentley. Tom is a published journalist and essayist (300+ articles), and the author of a short story collection, Flowering and Other Stories, published last spring by AuthorMike Ink. His 1999 short story, All That Glitters, won the National Steinbeck Center’s short story contest, and he has won many [...]
Beginning and Ending
Do you spring clean? Do you preserve peaches in the summer or freeze apple pies in October? Did you move a tassel from one side of your graduation cap to another? Have you danced at your daughter’s wedding? Have you walked out of the oncologist’s office with a clean bill of health, cancer free? Do [...]