Sitemap - 2022 - How to Glow in the Dark

RERUN POST: What Mike Knew

"Why isn't my publisher doing more to publicize my book?"

Happy third birthday, Neon Literary!

A chaser "Glow" in which I share my own perspective on the HarperCollins strike and answer an author's question about it

Guest Column: What Authors, Readers, and Everyone Outside Institutional Publishing Should Understand About the HarperCollins Strike

If you've taken music lessons on any instrument for any amount of time--ever--you've already learned most of the skills you need for a successful writing career.

"As a reader, I don't care if the books I enjoy are 'categorizable'...so why do publishers care about categories so damn much?"

On change in nature and the nature of change

All about literary agents: how I became one (and you can too) (although you should know that not all personality types jibe with the job)

What if your deal gets canceled, you get sued, your book bombs...and other nightmare scenarios in a publishing career

If you're not prepared for this one thing, career success will make you miserable

What to do when something or someone in the publishing industry makes you really, really angry

TYPOGRAPHY, or: the part of your book submission you're probably not thinking about enough

If you're dealing with writer's block or burnout right now, psst: your problem is not "motivation," it's metabolic cost

Your readers don't need your advice, quips, aphorisms, ego, or projections. They just need your presence on the page.

How to maximize your chances of long-term success, financial sustainability, and spiritual fulfillment in your writing career

An anthology of publishing advice, conveniently organized by subject

Welcome to Ask Me (and Each Other) Anything Week.

A tarot reading: what is it you need to find your way forward with that book project (or whatever creative thing it is you're working on)?

Memoirs, essays, parodies, parenting, poetry, clever-conceit chapter structures, and other book concepts I beg you to reframe if you want a commercial publisher and aren't a rejection-fetish masochist

To become a great author, stop it with your freaking goal-setting and "manifesting" and instead let this teeming, unpredictable world manifest itself in *you*

Move toward joy. Move toward light. Play, laugh, rejoice -- and if anyone tries to make you feel ashamed for any of this, tell them to kick rocks

"But isn't a proposal supposed to be just a summary of my book--not the whole thing?"

Debating, rebutting, justifying, explaining, reacting...and other ways to waste your precious time, energy, and potential at every juncture in your publishing career (and life)

The next time you're paralyzed by perfectionism, self-doubt, or shame, remember: the meaning of life (and good writing) isn't certainty; it's evolution.

A few tips for limping along through deep focus/creative work if you too find that life in 2022 has made a chiffonade of your brains

A definitive guide to author photos, which are simultaneously the most important and least important thing in your publishing career

"What's the point of writing about gender-based violence in this time of fascist backlash?"

Welcome to the P&L: a deep dive into the document editors must create in order to offer on your book, determine your advance, and convince their colleagues that you're a good bet

The manifold blessings of having at least one publishing nemesis

Q and A edition: please know that any grump you detect in my replies to your perfectly valid and excellent questions has been triggered not by you but by [gestures out the window].

"Is it bad if ________?": on "good" vs. "bad" advances, sales, editorial responses, and other publishing career developments inviting interpretation

The transformative question not enough authors ask themselves: "What *didn't* happen to me?"

Rise to fall. Rise again. Rise anyway.

The most important thing to keep in mind as you navigate the publishing industry is that you're going to die and are in fact sweeping closer to the moment of your death with every passing nanosecond

"Am I struggling with this book project because books are hard to write, or am I struggling because it's the wrong book for me?"

How not to burn your editor out

My Manuscript Wish List

On great writing, limerence, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy's ongoing masterclass in both

Hypervigilance won't keep you safe in your writing career or anywhere else

Fill up your senses...OR ELSE

A few zero-cost rituals for dissipating writer's block, easing anxiety, and re-centering your focus when you get distracted by ye olde hellscape outside and within

How to write a book that people still want to read a hundred years from now

"Can I write about this?": if you're freaked out about getting canceled, read me.

On timing, timeliness, and time anxiety: will your book still be relevant when it comes out?

Q and A edition: oh captain, my captain! ...What do you mean you're not the captain, I'm the captain? Oh God, we're all doomed

Please, please, writers and artists, make these two goal sheets for yourself in 2022 and hang them somewhere prominent so you don't forget about them

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