My best tips for publishing success
A year-end clips retrospective ft. the advice I wish every writer would internalize.
Remember when the week between Christmas and New Year’s was the only one all year in which one felt like a listless, uncertain, grouchy, ovoid nonentity—a human sea cucumber, going nowhere, signifying nothing, adrift and gelatinous as the days pass on this dark sea floor?
SIGH. ME NEITHER.
This week’s newsletter is a clips episode. Like most of publishing, I’m off “on break,” by which I mean I’m doing childcare and trying to recover some semblance of vitality as I make hopeful yet flexible plans for the short-term future.
Perhaps you are doing similar. If your goals for getting back in the existential saddle this year include getting a book deal or maintaining a sustainable book-writing career, behold: the most useful 2020 “Glow” posts for doing that.
On writing the kind of proposal that will make literary agents (and publishers!) start screaming with excitement
The most common issue book proposals have (and how to fix it in yours)
Why is writing a book proposal so HARD?
Your chapter outline, or: showing some ankle at Petticoat Junction
How to write an author bio [FREE POST]
On “comps”/comparative titles sections
On boundaries, habits of mind, communication, and other interpersonal skills vital to developing awesome working relationships in publishing, an often deeply exasperating and uncertain field
What makes a great author-agent relationship? [FREE POST]
The impossibility of certainty in book publishing
Why I wish every author would read WHEN THINGS FALL APART by Pema Chödron
On the business of selling a book and where to channel the power of authorial anxiety
What REALLY matters for a book’s success?
On running your books like a business
The biggest surprises you’ll encounter on your book publishing journey
Posts that are really just codependent self-help suggestions disguised as publishing advice, but seriously, people
On how to surface tip-of-the-tongue ideas from your subconscious
Why publishing a book is not going to make you happy for more than about two seconds
Original “How to Glow in the Dark” content will be back next week!
Topics I plan to cover in 2021 include:
how to select and edit sample chapters for a proposal or manuscript
a walkthrough on how I evaluate incoming submissions
the techniques that I, a shiftless couch potato, have learned from athletes re: cultivating motivation and discipline and rebounding from failure and why I think authors need to learn these things, too
on why you shouldn’t ask your literary agent “when will the proposal be ready” and the general nature of a healthy agent-author relationship: we can stand with you on the basketball court, watch you take shots, demonstrate technique, and give you pointers, but we can’t tell you when exactly you’re actually going to sink a basket
something something “lots of you people are signing bad contracts, and it upsets me”
on the importance of play in an intellectually serious writing career
and of course, anything that strikes me as of general importance to authors. Subscribers are always welcome to send me topic requests at anna at neonliterary dot com. (Please clearly indicate that that is what the email is, and no guarantee I’ll be able to reply, although I’ll look at all requests carefully.)
Here’s to a less depressing year ahead.
Rest well this week, happy new year in advance, and fun fact for you: sea cucumbers are not just jell-o and purposelessness. Their bodies contain ossicles—teeny tiny scattered bones near the surface of the skin—that help them go rigid when necessary.
Ossicles look A LOT like Chex Mix. Behold the microscopic, crunchy, pretzeléd elegance of the universe:
Sea cucumbers also breathe through their anuses.
HAPPY MONDAY!