The Novel is Just Fine, Thank You

Some interesting reads out there in blog-land:

The prolific and always candid Lauren Baratz-Logsted discusses writing in multiple genres, and the various mythologies about that.

Scott William Carter, a debut author whose website I just discovered yesterday, talks about the dangers of being too candid at your place of work.

The talented and admirable Betina Krahn guest blogs on the Writing Playground to discuss the composition of sex scenes.

The bottomless pit of publishing know-how that is Writer Beware serves up another of their infamous and endlessly amusing lists: this one about what Writer Beware can’t do. My favorite entries:

11. Tell you that normally, upfront fees are a warning sign of a questionable agent, but your agent is the exception. Sorry. We understand how much you want to believe it, especially if the fee is already on your credit card–but we can’t lie to you. Go ahead–shoot the messenger. We can take it.

10. Admit that whatever writers’ mythology you’re clinging to is absolutely true, and we were wrong to contradict you. I’ve had extended email exchanges with writers who vigorously and sometimes angrily attempted to convince me I was in error when I told them that new writers can get good agents without having to be published first, or that commercial publishers do market all their books, not just the bestsellers, or that it’s not an author’s job to get his or her book onto bookstore shelves, or that writers don’t have to give back their advances if they don’t earn out. These pernicious myths are astonishingly deeply rooted–especially when they’re shoring up a bad decision.

When you see the comment threads on agent blogs or go to Absolute Write, you see how common things like that really are. If I read too much of it, I start to get all distracted and Sailor Boy makes loud, throat-clearing noises about how maybe I need to not spend so very much time online and oh, how’s that book coming along? Working hard? Huh? Huh?

Yeah…