One of the tricky things about being “pre-published” (thanks, Julie!) is that there’s no structure to my day. I don’t have deadlines or external structure of any sort. And for someone with ADHD, that can be disastrous.
Keeping going
Category: writing
My Favorite Writing Blogs
When you’re a writer, there are a LOT of people who want to give you advice. A lot of that advice contradicts each other, although that doesn’t actually make it bad. It just means that not all advice is for everyone. Part of the learning process is figuring out which advice works for you and what you can safely ignore.
I try to absorb as much info as I can, on the principle that it can’t hurt to get as many different perspectives as possible. It can get overwhelming, especially in the bad old days when I was still trying to find my feet and listened to everyone all the time. As with anything else, once I had read enough and got more practiced at sorting out the useful from the not-for-me it got easier to find the writers who really made sense to me.
Over time I’ve curated a collection of blogs that I find to have the most diverse–and useful–advice for me. YMMV, of course, but in no particular order, here are the top blogs on my weekly reading list:
Pitching on Twitter
#PitMad was this past week with over 40,000 tweets (and retweets). By all accounts, it was a rousing success. It trended for six hours and hooked up countless aspiring authors with agents and editors.
For those who don’t know, PitMad is one of the many Twitter-based pitching events, where writers tweet their book pitch and tag it with the event’s hashtag. If an agent or editor wants to see more, they like the tweet. It’s a really exciting, moderately stressful event, but a great way to get your writing out there.
I got my agent(!!!) the old-fashioned way, by querying directly, but Twitter pitching is really interesting to watch. It’s kind of like prom for writers, watching everyone rework and tweak their tweets, getting them perfect for the big day.
Entirely by chance I’m in a writing group with someone who works for Pitch Wars and we had a meeting yesterday. Since I’m sure I know people who are interested in pitching future twitter events, (here’s a list of some this year) I took notes on my friend’s thoughts from this PitMad.
- If your tweet starts with a long sentence, people glaze over. Try. Shorter. Sentences. They’re more attention grabbing
- Don’t use a big name comp title for two reasons
- It makes it look like you don’t know your genre very well. If the only YA novel you know is Twilight (which also came out ages ago and is therefore not a very relevant comp.) that says you just don’t read a lot.
- It shows you have unrealistic expectations. Look for books that do well, but aren’t breakout stars. This is one case where shooting for the moon is the wrong way to go.
And as with all pitches, make sure you get someone else to look over it before you post so you don’t put out a mortifying typo.
Did anyone out there do PitMad? How about other Twitter pitches? Got any advice for other writers? Let me know!
P.S. My mss is at 64,000 words!
Bess Carnan 