Category: Querying

Potluck Advice: The Search for an Agent

On a recent winter night—dark but not stormy—a dozen writers at various points in their novels gathered over chicken pot pie, roasted vegetables, spinach salad with grapefruit, and chocolate cookies to swap stories and advice about finding a good agent….

Common Health Conditions for Writers

Writers are alarmingly susceptible to certain overlooked and under-reported maladies. But early detection is key, and as a fellow author concerned about the well-being of his community, I implore you to take two minutes out of your day to review…

Under Pressure

People used to ask, “When is your next book due?” and I would laugh, self-consciously, because I didn’t have deadlines. I wasn’t a writer who had contracts or editors waiting for me to produce anything. In those bygone days, I…

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

I am not a Buddhist (although I have researched Buddhism in the service of one of my novels), but I’ve spent time pondering in relation to my writing a variant of the famous Buddhist kōan*: You can hear the sound…