Aspiring Novelists

Hello All, I hope life is treating you well.  Things are good here in my neck of the woods. Last weekend I attended a writer's conference in Roanoke, Virginia.  I met some interesting people and learned a lot about the publishing business.  One of the more informative sessions I attended was conducted by Joan Timberlake, Literary Agent for Timberlake Literary Services.  She spoke about the top ten errors writers make when submitting their manuscripts.  I thought it would be helpful to share them with you: Writers should not send mass e-mails.  No Dear Sir or Madam headings.  Writers should not contact literary agents when what they really want is a marketer for their novel.   Agents do not do this. They are primarily concerned with  selling the novel to a publisher.   Sending an upolished manuscript to an agent expecting them to edit it will get a writer r...

Hello All, I hope life is treating you well. Things are good here in my neck of the woods. I've been plugging away at the second draft of my novel and am now on chapter four. The writing moves a lot quicker when I have the first copy to draw material from. Only thirty-five more chapters left… sigh. As I reviewed my new draft, I realized my writing had come a long way. In the beginning, I had no idea how important point-of-view was to approaching a story. In fact, I didn’t fully understand the concept and how it worked. Active and passive verbs were not considered during the writing process. My text was sprinkled with so many adverbs and adjectives it would have made a florist barf. Flowery prose is an understatement. As each of these weaknesses was identified, I endeavored to learn how to correct them. Twenty "how to" books later, followed by lots and lots of practice, I actually have a draft that has the potential to someday become a novel. Although I've come to...