Friday, March 25, 2011

Useful Blogs

I'm putting my ear to the ground and looking for online resources to help with networking. The other day, I stumbled on this really useful blog called "Literary Rambles." Not only a clever title, but offers a useful and comprehensive list of literary agents, updated weekly through their "Agent Spotlight" feature. I've included their blog under the heading "Useful Blogs," if you'd like to take a closer look.

If anyone out there is aware of other blogs they've found useful in the writing world, please notify me at cloudhime@gmail.com.

-The Writer Librarian

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Correction re: Cicada

Cicada is not accepting submissions at this time. I noted this when I visited their website today. FYI.

More later.

-The Writer Librarian

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Poor Man's Copyright and Where to Submit Literary Fodder

The second draft of my novel is nearly done. It will still need a lot of work, but I'm going to back it up a disc and mail it to myself. This practice, if you're not familiar, is known as the "Poor Man's Copyright." This way, if someone claims I stole their idea, I can back it up with an unopened postmarked package with a date.

The writing part of the novel was a wonderful, excruciating, daunting, and delirious process. Now comes the part where I put it down for awhile (I found it surprisingly saddening to say goodbye to my characters) and get some distance from it. In the meantime, I am submitting it to some trusted writer friends who I hope will rip it to shreds. That way, it will already be beaten to a pulp before I think of submitting it to an agent.

I've also been told that I need to get some short stories published, otherwise an agent or publisher won't give my work a second look. I found a list of publications (and specs) to send submissions, courtesy of Poet & Writers magazine. The list can be found here. Since I'm also trying to break ground in the YA genre, I will see if I can draft up some material for a publication called Cicada.

The attempt to publish will I'm sure be even more excruciating, daunting, and delirious. It's like I've climbed an Everest, just to be presented with another Everest. I've heard horror stories. How getting published is like winning the lottery. That the business side of art is ruthless. How cold calls will be necessary. How I'll have to write probably ten more drafts of my novel before it's even readable. But hey, nothing worth doing is easy, right? At least that's what I'll be telling myself as my palms sweat and the nausea bubbles in my stomach.

-The Writer Librarian

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Publishing in Library Land

Stumbled upon a really interesting article on the In the Library with the Lead Pipe website today. The author is well-informed, and goes over all the hoops involved with publishing a book in the ebook and internet "exploding text" age. The article can be found here.

One of the things she talks about is how complicated the process is, and how many different people have to have stamps of approval on the work. This is something that isn't commonly talked about among writers, but it definitely should be a necessary topic of conversation for those who want to market their work.

For those interested in query letters, here's a link with some useful tips. This focuses on publishing young adult fiction, but can likely be applied to most genres.

I'm interested in researching other ways to network in the writing world--with every Tom, Dick, Harry, Sally, and Molly trying to get published, this task seems even more daunting. More on this later.