When we first start writing professionally, we become very focused on deadlines. What’s due this week? What’s due next week? But eventually you start to think beyond that. You realize that productivity isn’t just about getting things done. It’s about making progress...
There are a lot of misconceptions about what it means to market something. Not the least of these is that marketing somehow cheapens writing or other creative work. Many writers, artists and other creatives avoid marketing like the plague — as if it will infect...
It can be difficult to find time to write. Especially for those of us with day jobs or businesses or freelance gigs — and let’s face it, that’s most of us — it’s not easy to make progress on the writing projects we really care about. If...
Once you’ve finished your ebook’s first draft, it’s tempting to launch it into the world and sit back with a glass of bubbly. Most authors, though, need to spend a bit longer on their ebook before it’s ready for the world to see. (If you’re not quite at the...
GIVEAWAY: Chuck is giving away a copy of his latest writing book, Create Your Writer Platform, to a random commenter. Comment within one week to enter! (Must live in US or Canada to win.) Good luck! (UPDATE: Maria won!) Pitching literary agents and book editors is one...
If you had told me two years ago that I would be making a full-time living from freelance blogging, earning in excess of ten times per hour what I earned in my job, I would have laughed you out of town. And yet that is what has happened: in less than two short years,...
This column is excerpted from Guide to Literary Agents, from Writer’s Digest Books. One of the most common questions I get at writers’ conferences is this: Can I query multiple literary agents at once? My answer is that not only yes, but yes, you’re encouraged...
No one reads more novel beginnings than literary agents. They’re the ones on the front lines, sifting through inboxes and slush piles. And they can tell us which Chapter One approaches are overused and cliché, as well as which writing techniques just plain don’t work...
If you attract an agent’s interest and they want to know more, Google is their next step. An agent typically investigates a client before offering them representation, understandably. If you’re pitching nonfiction and touting a writer platform to help sell books, then...
This column is excerpted from Guide to Literary Agents, from Writer’s Digest Books. Writers always seem to come up with great questions on how to write a query letter. In fact, this post on query letter advice is so big that it’s broken down into two parts. See Part I...
