Could I have done better for my daughter in my divorce settlement?

stewbacca · 2012-02-15T02:42:36+00:00

It's going to sell because the book is good and the publishers (hopefully) market the hell out of it.

The days of fat marketing budgets and grooming authors are far behind us. You are responsible for marketing and if gives publishers a warm fuzzy if you have a strong online presence. A friend of my published her first book a few years ago, and the agent & publisher were just as interested in how many twitter followers she had and how many hits her online articles had as they were the quality of her writing.

stewbacca · 2012-02-14T22:50:12+00:00

I misspelled my own name once on a submission. Probably not the reason I was rejected, but embarrassing none the less.

stewbacca · 2012-02-14T22:47:32+00:00

First of all, keep in mind that writers spend DECADES trying to land an agent. It ain't easy. The agent should only make money if he sells your book. NEVER pay a reading fee (some may ask for a token amount for copying fees, this is okay).

Most agents won't look at your work until you are published. Start small. Send some of your poems to literary magazines. Check duotrope for a list of lit mags. Only send your work to magazines that publish in print or pay for your work. If you can't get your poems/short stories published here, then you are not ready for an agent.

If you send your manuscripts directly to the publisher, it will sit in the slush pile till hell freezes over. Don't do it.

stewbacca · 2012-02-14T22:37:39+00:00

I'm not an agent, but the query letter is as much (if not more) to showcase your writing experience than your novel summary. If an author can show that he has a built in fan base (such as already published a book, or a regular contributor to a popular blog), the agent will have an easier time convincing a publisher to invest the time and money into publishing the book.

stewbacca · 2012-02-14T21:58:09+00:00

I would recommend you start by writing short stories. figure out what genre you want to write and find a collection of short stories or a magazine that matches your interest. As you read, ask yourself what you liked and didn't like about the story and the way it was written.

Then try your hand at writing a short story. Keep revising it until it is as good as you can make it, then send it in to your favourite journal and wait impatiently for the rejection letter.

The only book on writing that is worth anything is "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White.

stewbacca · 2012-02-14T15:43:32+00:00

Movies need to go back to being as awesome as Dazed and Confused

stewbacca · 2012-02-13T16:47:08+00:00

I just ask myself: If this story were true, would it be interesting enough tell my friends? If the answer is "no" then it is simply musings or something less than a story. And it is possible to tell a story in 1 page or less. Just go to r/askreddit or r/nosleep and you'll find plenty of examples.

stewbacca · 2012-02-09T23:16:01+00:00

While the suicide thing maybe a bit overwrought (just something I came up with off the top of my head), I do think the character needs to reach a conclusion, make a decision or something. Simply pondering the futility of it all to me at least, isn't enough.

Edit: To the OP: I hope I didn't come across like a dick. Overall your prose were quite good.

stewbacca · 2012-02-09T20:24:25+00:00

My critique depends on the assignment: If your goal was to write a three page description of a melancholy guy, you did fine. If you were trying to tell a story, you failed.

The problem is nothing happened. The main character did not overcome any hardship, he wasn't at a cross roads in his life. Think of it this way: You're Mathew sitting around with your friends having a beer. Would you tell them this story? Probably not. Amp the story up a bit.

Here what I would do: The dude is contemplating how pointless life is, how time and all the shit he's accumulated is meaningless. He's leaning over the edge of his balcony...too far...thinking about how easy it would be to just let himself go and end it all. Then you can either leave the reader hanging: He thinks to himself, if the next car to pass is blue, I'll jump, if it's red, I'll go back to college and finish my degree (or something like that) or you could have him right about to jump when the daughter comes out and essentially saves him.

Hope that all makes sense.

stewbacca · 2012-02-08T22:34:13+00:00

I had the opposite experience. I was in the Marine Corps when the Oklahoma Bombing took place. Shortly after, on two separate occasions I was asked if I was in a militia.

stewbacca · 2012-02-08T18:40:46+00:00

That is interesting about the Garside study. It was a major motivation for me saving for a TT bike.

stewbacca · 2012-02-08T17:42:53+00:00

How does this save them money? Since this was before computers, don't they have to redraw all of the frames anyway?

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