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How to Write Kick-Ass Character Descriptions

I’m guilty of it, too: The description of a new character who has just entered your story as having “big brown eyes and frizzy black hair” or “ginger hair that cascaded down her shoulders and eyes the color of jade.” No matter how creative you get, describing a person according to his or her hair […]

Bisy Backson: The Unsung Value of Idle Time

Happy Independence Day! And congratulations to the winner of the How to be a Writer in the E-Age give-away, Sara Renae. Thank you to Anne Allen for a wonderful guest post last week and to everyone who took the time to comment. I am eager to read Anne’s book, and I encourage you to pick […]

Five Things I’ve Learned About Memoir Writing

1. Your protagonist (you) should be 80-90% sympathetic with only a few flaws.

I used to think that the more flawed a character was, the more people would be able to relate to him/her. I quickly learned that too many flaws make a character unlikable. Readers don’t want to read 200-300 pages about a […]

Do Not Disturb

I’m on a private writing retreat this week—private meaning just me, my laptop, a lot of Coke Zero, and my manuscript. Oh, and Siri. I use Siri to send text messages while driving more than anything else. I rarely ask her where I can find a yoga studio or a place to eat because […]

When Should We Limit Literary License?

An interesting discussion took place over lunch here at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto last week. The topic: literary license. The talk was sparked by The Lifespan of a Fact, a book co-authored by essayist John D’Agata, who teaches at the University of Iowa, and his former fact checker, Jim Fingal, that was published by […]

2011 Books in Review

Happy New Year! Can you believe it’s almost 2012? I feel like I’m living in the future.

Sierra Godfrey’s post last week reminded me that I used to wrap up the year with a list of the books I’d read that year. My goal is always to read two books a month, and with two […]

34-24-34: The truth about fashion models

A friend of mine sent me a link to fashion model Jenna Sauer’s (aka Tatiana Anymodel’s) interview on Jezebel.com with the note, “I wish you could do this questionnaire too—I’d like to see your answers vs “Tatiana’s!” Well friend, here they are. But first, a little background about me:

When I was 18, I moved […]

Are You Plagued by Perfectionism?

I arrived at the tail end of an interesting lunchtime conversation at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto last week—just in time to hear author Julia Scheeres utter, “Well, that was depressing.” From there the conversation continued on about how women tend to submit less often to journals, magazines, and newspapers (and by extension, agents and […]

Author Advances: Survey Results

Thank you so much to the 105 authors who took the author advance survey! Here are the results (now with author comments added below):

Average and Median of All Advances

Five people reported multi-book deals (four two-book deals and one four-book deal), which skewed the results a bit. Below are results counting the multi-book deals […]

Survey: Author Advances

UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey! (All 105 of you). I’m still analyzing results and will post data tomorrow, Wednesday, Nov. 2.

It’s survey time! If you are a published author who has received an advance or who is contracted to receive an advance, please take a minute (it literally takes […]