Year: 2012
One of the first questions clients of my literary agency, Genre Management Inc. (some day I’ll explain why I chose that name) ask is “After I deliver my book, when will it come out?” When I tell them between 9 to 15 months depending upon the publisher’s inventory, they tactfully freak out. It’s understandable in our age of instant gratification to be baffled by the glacial pace. In the past I’ve said that the traditional Big Six scheduling model was crazy and short sighted. And for a certain kind of book, sometimes it is. But as Steve, Callie, Jeff and…
Read MoreThe last two weeks we’ve been talking in these posts about buckling down and hitting a groove. By that I mean finding and achieving a steady, productive, working rhythm. Traction. Nothing gets stuff done like traction. When the rubber grips the road, we can deliver any payload. Long-range. Cross-country. Anywhere. The opposite of traction is slippage. Spinning our wheels. Starting and stopping. Sputtering. When we achieve traction, we’re actually accomplishing something. We’re shooting film, we’re filling blank pages, we’re structuring our new start-up. For the past two weeks we’ve talked about thinking in blocks of time and saying no. Thinking…
Read More“Why should I hire a publicist?” is one of the top questions I’ve been asked by authors, film makers and whatsit creators. When I started out, I’d cite what I’d heard others before me throw out, the main thing being this: Publicists have a strong list of contacts that authors don’t often have themselves. These days, when I’m asked, my answer is: You might not need a publicist. My follow-up questions for the first timers: Are you in this for the long-term or is this a one-time project? Is this the only book or film or whatsit that you plan…
Read MoreWe were speaking last week about returning from a vacation and gearing up to get back in the groove. I said that my first “note to self” would be to start thinking, not in immediate go-go terms, but in longer, extended blocks of time. My second marching order to myself is to start saying no. The aim of these admonitions is to establish a realistic project timetable, to buckle down to a serious working rhythm, and to protect the air space around that timetable and that rhythm. So I’ll stop saying yes to things. First I’ll stop saying yes to…
Read MoreONE SHOT The other day someone asked me what I thought a first novelist needs to know about the business. You have one opportunity at each of the publishing houses. There are no second chances. Your agent (and yes you need an agent to get your book in front of an editor) can’t send the book to another editor at a house if one has already passed. Publishers are small operations these days and everyone inside them knows what everyone else is being submitted. An agent who sends the same book to two editors at the same house will be…
Read MoreI’m just home from two weeks’ vacation—and gearing up to get back to work. The first thing I’ll do is stop myself from thinking in terms of immediate gratification. I will make myself think, instead, in blocks of time. I will not put pressure on the first day, or even the first week. Resistance would love me to do that. Resistance knows that if I try to do too much too soon, I’ll fail. Resistance would love to see that happen. So I will remind myself that the enemy is not time. The enemy is Resistance. The wide receiver returning…
Read MoreI don’t want to get up. This thought hits me at about 4:30 AM every morning. It comes in the voice of the animated devil sitting on my shoulder, a la the old Tom and Jerry cartoons. The little angel on the other shoulder always responds by climbing into my head and yelling, get up, lazy—almost as annoying as a soccer stadium filled with four-year olds going to town with vuvuzelas. For the most part, the devil doesn’t say much. I rarely hear his voice. He just sits around grinning. The angel is the vocal one because she’s the key…
Read More[The blog is on vacation this week. Here’s a favorite post from 2009. Back soon!] What happens to us as artists when our personal lives crash and burn? When we’ve lost our spouses or our homes or our minds; when we’ve been betrayed or, worse, betrayed someone else; when it’s three in the morning and sunrise feels like it’s never going to come? Here’s my experience: some of my best work has been done when my personal life was in chaos. This seems to make no sense. How can we do good work when it’s all we can do to…
Read MoreI just read Steve’s post, THE BIG PAYOFF, and if you’ll forgive me, I’m going to let the continued saga of how Honore de Balzac’s influenced my life rest. My gut is that the continuation of my hero’s journey story from last week would have devolved into something of an isolationist rant about the pitfalls of living your life according to the values of your chosen profession’s café society. I stumbled into book publishing and soon discovered that like any other demi-monde, it has influential insiders that promulgate a dubious juju—one that affixes “heat” to a book and/or a person…
Read MoreWe had a birth in the family recently—my nephew Justin and his wife Lissa had a healthy baby boy, whom they named Bryce. It got me to thinking about the concept of the Big Payoff. The Big Payoff is central to the American dream. In Westerns, it’s claiming that ten-thousand-acre spread where Ma and Pa can raise the young-uns. In gangster flicks, it’s the last big job that the criminal pulls, when he takes down the U.S. Mint. For the Vegas gambler, the big payoff is the jackpot. For you and me, it might be the dream job, the fantasy…
Read MoreFREE MINI COURSE
Start with this War of Art [27-minute] mini-course. It's free. The course's five audio lessons will ground you in the principles and characteristics of the artist's inner battle.
