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July 16, 2005
Jennifer Weiner's tips to aspiring novelists
There are of course many websites that promise to tell you how to be a novelist. Some are earnest, some are funny, some know what they're talking about and some are just trying to sell you some literary snake oil.
Jennifer Weiner, the author of Little Earthquakes, Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, who seems to me both funny and relevant, writes in her blog:
So you want to be a novelist?
Well, there's no one path to take. Novelists come in all shapes and sizes. They're men and women, wunderkinds and retirees. Some of them are very attractive. The rest of us resent them horribly. And if there was a single magic bullet, or a list of steps to follow that would guarantee publication, believe me, someone would have published it by now. What follows is just my take on the question - a completely idiosyncratic, opinionated, flawed and somewhat sassy take on some of the steps you can take to get published. Important caveat: I have only written two books, and I'm thirty-two, which, as my mother would hasten to point out, means I am probably not qualified to give advice to anyone about anything. If you're looking for lessons from the life masters - people who've made long careers in the world of fiction - then run, do not walk, to your local bookshop and buy Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's utterly indispensable Bird by Bird, and Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings and Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft.
If you want my advice, read on (and if you've already written your book and just want to figure out how to get it published, skip ahead to Step 8).
Posted by Andreas at July 16, 2005 07:34 AM
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