Columns

A Cheat Sheet to the 2019 Booker Prize Longlist Nominations

September 27th, 2019

One of the most coveted literary prizes in the game, the Booker Prize for Fiction comes with a hefty purse of £50,000. Even better, it’s known to boost book sales so dramatically that author Deborah Moggagh, for one, has complained that it “capsizes the literary world” every year. The soaring parabola every winner sees on their sales figures is known as the Booker bump.

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Finish Your Manuscript With Project Management

September 26th, 2019

“I’m going to write a novel” is a project that needs breaking down. Breaking it down separates the dreamers from the do-ers. I’m going to single out some of the project management processes that I think will help you finish a manuscript. Just know a couple things: 1. This is not a substitute for actual project management training. People study this stuff for years. Think of this like me giving you a few cooking tips. Don’t run off and open a restaurant, but this’ll make your food at home a little better.

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"Pennyworth" is Worth a Watch

September 25th, 2019

The very premise of Pennyworth sounds like a punchline. An origin story for Batman’s butler? Seriously? When the rumors started to surface in the midst of Gotham’s first season, I immediately dismissed them as a joke, an idea too ludicrous to exist. But I should have known better. If Alfred can star in his own comic series, he is certainly capable of carrying a TV show. And while it has its share of shortcomings, Pennyworth is surprisingly compelling and a lot of fun.

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Putting in the Time: How Taking Creative Control Helps All Aspects of My Life

September 25th, 2019

Original image by Andrey Grushnikov Life is hard. Writing is hard. Writing and having an entire life outside of writing? Extra hard. A couple of months ago, I wrote about the tools I’ve developed to make it possible for writing to be more of a priority in my life. Since then, it has not been the easiest of things for me to actually...do those things.

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Tackling the Issue of Consent in Fiction

September 23rd, 2019

Original image by Cliff Booth Sex in fiction often falls into the historical notion of men as conquerors taking what they want without asking and women tolerating whatever they’re given. Naturally, this is a gross generalization, but one key to rectifying this societal imbalance, at least in part, is to make consent in fiction explicit. Explicit consent is clear and direct.

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Ask Nick: Publishing 201 — What Do Editors Do All Day?

September 20th, 2019

Hello, and welcome to Publishing 201—an occasional column in which I'll answer your questions about writing and publishing, so long as they haven't been asked and answered a million times already. There is plenty of 101-level advice out there, and thousands of writers who can repeat it, but very little has been written for writers further along in their careers or aesthetic development. If you have a 201-level question you'd like me to answer, reach out! This week, we have a question from a newly successful author:

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What Does It Really Take to Get a Book Published?

September 19th, 2019

Photo by Laura Kapfer via Unsplash Writing and publishing a book is a bucket-list item for a whole lot of us. Yet many don't succeed. More people than you’d think have a manuscript just sitting there on their hard drive, because, somewhere along the line, they came to an unfortunate conclusion: Getting a book published is hard. Really hard.

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8 Writing and Researching Tools You Might be Ignoring

September 18th, 2019

Image via rawpixel.com You sit down to write and—usually, at some point—you have to stop and do some research because you don't know what comes next. Similarly, I know a lot of writers enjoy writing prompts because they can help get the creative juices flowing. Whatever the case, there are tools out there that can help you improve your writing, put ideas in your head, or help you get out of a mental slump. Here are some of my favorites. 

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Storyville: Pacing and Depth in Short Fiction vs. Novels

September 17th, 2019

I’m teaching a few different classes right now, and one of the biggest issues I see with authors that switch from short stories to novels is pacing and depth. If you’ve written flash fiction you may already understand the difference between telling a story in 1,000 words (or less) and doing the same with 5,000 words (or more). As you go from a story that is less than 7,500 words long (the maximum word count for a short story) to a novel, you are going to have to expand up to TEN TIMES that length. So let’s dig in and address that expansion.

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Book vs. Minisieries vs. Films: It - The Special Beverly Edition

September 16th, 2019

It: Chapter Two hit theaters on September 6th, 2019, debuting at number one at the box office, demonstrating once again the timeless appeal of a deranged clown/multidimensional being stalking and murdering children. Based on the 1986 novel It by Stephen King, Chapter Two—as you might expect from the title—is the continuation of It: Chapter One, released in 2017.

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