Posts Tagged "writing"
Thurs Readers’ Roundup: Forbes’ Top-Paid Authors and more…
*Forbes releases their list of highest-paid authors. Le wistful sigh…(Via Galleycat.)
This week Forbes published their annual list of the highest paid writers. Novelist James Patterson leads the pack with $84 million–a $14 million increase from last year.
Here’s more from the article: “The jump comes courtesy of a 17-book, $150 million deal Patterson signed with his publisher, Hachette Book Group, in 2009. The peerlessly prolific Patterson, who works with a team of co-authors to boost his output, published 10 of those books during this period. All told, including his backlist, he had an astonishing 20 titles on PW’s year-end lists of bestsellers, comprising more than 10 million copies.”
Like Patterson, Stephenie Meyer and John Grisham write both children’s and adult books; they both made the cut raking in $21 million and $18 million respectively. The authors on the list who write exclusively for children include Rick Riordan, Jeff Kinney, Suzanne Collinsand J.K. Rowling. The list included three members of the Kindle Million Club.
*NYTimes bestseller Carrie Jones has tips on accessing writerly motivation through the lazy days of summer. Must try these. Part of a series on Vermont College alumn blog Through the Tollbooth.
*An excerpt from Tyra Banks’ new YA series, Modelland. Go on, read it. You know you want to. (I actually do kinda dig that cover.)
And that’s it for me this week! With two weeks left of my Stone Hearth retreat, I’m diving into Part II of the second Egmont book. Wish me word count!
Monday Muse: Writing is easy. Not.
It never* gets easier, does it? Beth Revis talks about why it shouldn’t, if you’re serious about your writing:
It’s actually a good thing that it never gets easier.
See, here’s the thing. If it got easier, that means we’re not challenging ourselves any more. We’ve dug ourselves a nice little groove, and we’re not trying to improve.
*(Seriously, though. NEVER. At least not for me.)
Friday Freebie: Gone writin’
Just a quick FYI to anyone who happens to swing by my corner of the cyberverse:
I’ll be out of town, enjoying silence, nature, and a 100-year-old, possibly haunted farmhouse through the month of August. Internet there can generously be termed “unreliable,” so posts may be more intermittent than usual.
Try not to miss me too much!
Readers’ Roundup BONUS – 2 author interviews (only one of which is with me)
1. Ellen Whitlinger over at the YA Contemps. I got to edit the paperback edition of HARD LOVE and have been a huge fan ever since.
2. My stop on the Summer Blog Blast Tour, via Liz Burns. Totally forgot that I dropped a little bit of personal news in there, as well.
Hooray for interviews! Hooray for authors saying authorly things!
Monday Muse: On Writing Horror
(Because I’m still trying to.)
“A serious…story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis towards something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural law.”
Thursday: Readers’ Roundup
Bookish things around and about.
*Former student/always friend Alecia Whitaker posted a rant that I can SO get behind on her blog last week — in defense of the serial comma.
I’m still clinging to the serial comma. I can’t give it up.
For example, if I write, “I’m going to the store for watermelon, beans, and carrots,” it’s pretty clear to the reader what I’m getting. You may argue that it is just as clear to you if you read it as, “I’m going to the store for watermelon, beans and carrots.” But that groups beans and carrots. Are you looking for beans and carrots that are already packaged together?
By going down that road, you are setting yourself up for confusion. Look how clear things are when I write, ”I’m going to the store for watermelon, black and brown beans, and carrots.” When ditching the serial comma, it becomes, “I’m going to the store for watermelon, black and brown beans and carrots.” The absence of the serial comma implies something unintended about the carrots.
Anyway, you can read about it here real quick because Oxford makes it all much clearer. But please, for the love of God and for my sanity, could we just embrace the serial comma?
Word, sister. Serial commas 4Eva! And how adorable is Alecia’s book cover, by the by? 
*Meanwhile, tomorrow I’ll be joining Melissa Walker on our first stop of the Camplified! summer camp book tour, where she and I will be chatting with the campers at Staten Island Day Camp about reading, writing, and our new books. Fingers crossed for some S’mores and Mad Libs — old-skool camp-out style!
Thursday: Readers’ Roundup – Event in NYC *tonight!*
Not an event of mine, mind you, but still promising to be made of awesome. As per my rgz NYC host post:
If you’re in the New York City area, check out tonight’s “Great Teen Reads” event at Books of Wonder, featuring Leah Cypess (Desires of the Dead), Lisa Schroeder (The Day Before), Adele Griffin (Tighter), and Laurie Faria Stolarz (Deadly Little Games).
Also in the blogosphere today courtesy of MOI: Brian Farrey at the YA Contemps: 
The best YA promotes discussion. Whether it’s chatting over coffee about which werewolf from which book is sexier or some sort of deep discourse about hard-hitting issues that reflect the realities of many readers, YA succeeds when discussion follows.
Monday Muse
Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don’t start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
~William Safire, “Great Rules of Writing”
Monday Muse
I am averaging about 200 words per session with the new novel, where my typical output is closer to 2,000 per day. I’d been aiming for 1,000 per day in order to keep to my schedule. But this helps:
“This is how we go on: one day at a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root-canal at a time; boat-builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind us as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things – fish and unicorns and men on horseback – but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightening flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.”
–Stephen King, Bag of Bones
Release Day Delivery – and Cell Phone Wisdom, Part 4!
The thing that no one mentions about release day is how, really, it’s kind of anticlimactic. Unless you happen to have particularly attentive loved ones, the day of your book’s publication in and of itself is not necessarily momentous.
UNLESS…your publisher happens to arrange it so that your author copies arrive on your doorstep THAT VERY DAY!
(In other words — guess what I got this afternoon?)
What Would My Cell Phone Do?
BCCB had this to say about the book: “Fresh and funny…Readers looking for a lighthearted rom-com to kick off their summer will find much to like here.” Well, thank you!
Aggie’s cell phone has more fun than she does, and thus, we are soliciting CELL PHONE WISDOM this week. Whose phone is doling out the brilliance today?
Melissa Walker, author of Small Town Sinners
My cellphone would ask me to please stop leaving it at airport security, dropping it on the subway stairs and losing it between the couch cushions. It probably needs a better life than I can give it.
Denise Jaden, author of Losing Faith
My cell phone desperately wants to be put to use. If it were up to said cell phone, we would spend all day long together doing more than just checking my email. We would make use of the other forty apps, texting, and even phoning friends once in a while. The possibilities are endless (at least that’s what my cell phone tells me!)
Daniel Ehrenhaft, author of Friend Is Not a Verb
My cell phone would do the following, in no particular order:
1) Chastise me for getting sucked into its seductive void
2) Pat me on the back for being both impulsive and wise for my mobile iTunes purchases, even when I have the songs on CD at home
3) Toilet train my child
Um, not so sure about that last one, Dan. Cell phones may be wise beyond their years, but even technology has its limits!