Q : I have so much material for my memoir. How do I sort out what to include and what to leave out?
A : This is the key problem a writer faces when constructing a non-fiction memoir. Here are six specific steps to consider when making your [...]
Monthly Archives: July 2008 «
Ask the editor: 6 steps to writing a memoir
Publisher to author: Web marketing? You’re on your own
B ook publishers expect authors to take charge of their own online marketing. That means writers need to create their own clever websites and build active blogs and hopefully they’re also out there whirling on the social networks.
Cold hard reality
The cold hard reality is that many authors haven’t the foggiest idea how to do [...]
“Books are not dead!”
“Reading and writing go on, in new forms, forever!”
That’s the rallying cry at Stanford this week, where book and magazine publishers from around the globe have gathered for the 33rd annual Professional Publishing Course.
It’s my 12th year on the faculty, and I’m witnessing a new level of excitement, stimulating ideas, and heartwarming determination.
A very smart [...]
Choosing a title for your book
Editors pray for the perfect book title: a tight high-concept combination of words that crystallizes the content and intention of the work. A title so scintillating and irresistible that millions of readers want to run out and buy this book immediately.
Eureka! It happens.
Think of Chicken Soup for the Soul, or Men are from [...]
Ask the editor: Constructing the “narrative arc”
Q:My writers group thinks I need to strengthen the narrative arc in my novel. How can I do that?
A:The “narrative arc” is a fancy way of saying that every story needs to have a beginning, middle, and end. Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, you need an act one, act two, act three.
Take for [...]
Clay Felker’s impact on a young book editor
I’m among the publishing veterans who admired and benefited from the creativity and courage of Clay Felker, who died this week at the age of 82.
This celebrated and deeply influential editor made a big difference at the start of my own career when he assigned his young star reporter Tom Wolfe to write what turned [...]
How Hunter S. Thompson beat back his writer’s block
Writers sometimes suffer bouts of major paralysis. They want to write, are desperate to get down something great, but it’s just not coming easily, in fact not at all.
No one had a worse case of writer’s block than Hunter S. Thompson. After the presidential election of November, 1972, his contractual deadline for Fear and Loathing [...]
