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Editing books is the best job in the world for avid readers who also enjoy (or can handle) deadlines. If you’re also a writer, being a book editor gives you an inside track on what makes a book succeed or fail–not just on its own terms, but also in “the marketplace.” Being a book editor …
Thursday Postcard A Trunk Full of Words Fernando Pessoa was born in Lisbon in 1888. From the outside, his life might have seemed unsuccessful, even small. He worked as a translator, lived alone, and died of hepatitis in 1935. But Pessoa wasn’t alone in his solitude. He invented fictional alter egos he called ‘heteronyms,’ and together they wrote, …
Fiction’s big-picture fundamentals are things that apply to the entire story or novel—characters, plot, concept, and structure. They are crucial to a well-told tale. It doesn’t matter how exquisite your sentences are or how interesting a character is. If the basic situation is a cliché, or the plot is confusing, or there’s no tension, readers …
Thursday Postcard The desk contest is over! Sincere thanks to all who entered. As our judges review the entries and tabulate the results (kidding–it’s me!) I bring you one of the entries, with kind permission of its resident writer. This nest is home to the creative labor of JC Keough, creator of the Laramie Harper Chronicles …