New Literary Agency Listing: Looking Glass Literary & Media Management
firstwriter.com – Thursday July 27, 2023
We are a boutique agency with a full-service team of fierce advocates who support all facets of our clients' careers. Our priority is championing authors and books that reflect the diverse world around us. The books we work with leave lasting impressions that inspire growth, thought, and joy in the world.
New Literary Agency Listing: High Line Literary Collective
firstwriter.com – Thursday July 27, 2023
Standing at the cross-section between art and commerce, our agents facilitate thriving, vibrant careers for writers, artists and creators. From the moment we begin working with a client, we establish full-spectrum representation dedicated to each creator’s unique needs. From audience engagement, to career orientation, to strategic long-term management, our holistic guidance charts your most successful publishing journey.
Prototype Publishing announces development programme for writers and artists
thebookseller.com – Wednesday July 26, 2023
Prototype Publishing has announced a development programme for writers and artists, in partnership with New Writing North, as part of the Northern Writers’ Awards.
The Prototype Development Programme will offer extended support and career development to eight emerging writers and artists who have not yet had a book published. According to the publisher, the scheme is being launched in response to the lack of opportunities and mentoring schemes for writers and artists whose work "sits between conventional literary forms".
Funded by Arts Council England, the six-month online programme forms part of a wider project focusing on multidisciplinary and hybrid-genre approaches to writing, including a new prize in partnership with Frieze magazine, which will be announced in the autumn.
Participants will be given learning and personal development opportunities through workshops and feedback sessions, as well as seminars led by curators, writers, publishers, editors and literary agents. There are eight places on the programme, of which three are ring-fenced for applicants from the North of England, and each participant will be paid a bursary of £500.
New Literary Agent Listing: Clara Foster
firstwriter.com – Tuesday July 25, 2023
Looking to represent writers across genre fiction, upmarket, and reading-group, as well as select non-fiction. She is editorially-focused and works closely with clients in the lead up to submission to publishers.
In fiction, she is looking for stories in the upmarket/book-club sweet spot where literary and genre-fiction meet, intensely emotional literary women, and just about anything written with beautiful prose, a high-stakes plot, and/or a folkloric, legendary, or mythical grounding. She loves a romance in any genre—fantasy, historical, mystery, or a combination of all three—and will, no matter how dark a book gets in the middle, always gravitate towards a happy ending.
She is also looking for projects in the YA/Crossover space. Much like her taste in adult fiction, she wants to see clever world-building, emotional (and flawed) characters, and preferably a romantic sub-plot—or main plot. Here however she would like to find writing from authors who push the boundaries even further: new twists on old tropes, high concepts (an idea you can pitch in a sentence), and perspectives we rarely get to see.
In Non-fiction, she would like to find highly practical guides aimed squarely at women with the intention of filling crucial gaps in our collective knowledge.
5 Ways ChatGPT Can Improve, Not Replace, Your Writing
wired.co.uk – Sunday July 23, 2023
It's been quite a year for ChatGPT, with the large language model (LLM) now taking exams, churning out content, searching the web, writing code, and more. The AI chatbot can produce its own stories, though whether they're any good is another matter.
If you're in any way involved in the business of writing, then tools like ChatGPT have the potential to complete up-end the way you work—but at this stage, it's not inevitable that journalists, authors, and copywriters will be replaced by generative AI bots.
What we can say with certainty is that ChatGPT is a reliable writing assistant, provided you use it in the right way. If you have to put words in order as part of your job, here's how ChatGPT might be able to take your writing to the next level—at least until it replaces you, anyway.
Writing A Book: 5 Steps To Get Published
webwriterspotlight.com – Friday July 21, 2023
Writing a book is like assembling a puzzle. When you dump the puzzle pieces out, you grab for the ones that go together. You collect edge pieces and snap a few together here and there.
You have a plan - a process for solving the puzzle. Without one, you risk ending up with random clusters of puzzle pieces and gaps in the puzzle’s outline.
However, we know that creatives sometimes balk at processes. We applaud independence, but we also know sometimes you'll need more than a bunch of puzzle pieces (or in this case, words) to write a successful book and get published.
Outlander author Diana Gabaldon shares her writing tips
heraldscotland.com – Wednesday July 19, 2023
Outlander author Diana Gabaldon's nine-book series has sold more than 50 million copies world-wide.
As a major conference celebrating her best-selling books gets underway at the University of Glasgow, she shares her top three tips for writing a first novel.
1. "Read everything you can get your hands on. Read good stuff and read bad stuff because this is how you are going to learn to tell the difference.
"Why do you like one book over another? Is it because you like the characters more? Well, why do you like the characters more, is it because of the way they talk?
I finally landed a 6-figure book deal after 20 years of trying to become an author. Here's how I did it.
businessinsider.com – Wednesday July 19, 2023
Scoring a book deal is always an accomplishment, but after I dreamed of becoming an author for more than 20 years, selling a nonfiction project for six figures to a Big Five publisher felt both astonishing and hard-earned.
Like a lot of people, I'd always secretly harbored ambitions of becoming a writer, but I didn't start taking my craft seriously until my mid-20s when I invested in a Master of Fine Arts. Even then, writing remained a hobby for another few years.
In 2010, I lost my job in elementary education when an essay I wrote was publicized by the New York Post and the whole world — including my then-employer, the NYC Department of Education — was made aware that I had worked as a stripper and prostitute before becoming a schoolteacher.
I turned a humiliating experience into a flourishing freelance career, and I got serious about my ambitions to become an author.
Chris Parker on writing women narrators and seeing the world from their eyes
culturefly.co.uk – Monday July 17, 2023
I’ve been asked why I chose to make the narrator of my first novel, Nameless Lake, a woman, but really, that’s putting it the wrong way round. Something made me start writing in the voice of this character – Emma – and I only realised later that she would be the perfect narrator for the story I wanted to tell.
The roots of my decision might lie decades in the past, with the whole family rushing to the sofa in response to the mournful brass blare of the Coronation Street theme tune. Here was a world dominated by women’s voices, sharp and wild and larger-than-life yet somehow more real than anything else. I absorbed these voices long before I had an inkling that someone, somewhere had written them.
But years later, through some miracle of luck and time travel, I stood in a bar in Manchester while the Street’s creator Tony Warren shook my hand and told me he had enjoyed an episode I had written. I had somehow stepped into a parallel universe and was part of a team responsible for putting words in the characters’ mouths, fifteen of us taking turns to pick up the endless story and bring it to life by getting inside the skins of these people whose faces were as familiar to us as our own.
Wattpad to Launch its Publishing Scheduler – to Empower Authors
goodereader.com – Monday July 17, 2023
Wattpad is going to launch its Publishing Scheduler designed to redefine the publishing experience. The new tool, which will be available on July 19, will help webnovelists connect and engage with readers in a whole new way.
Here is how:
Studies show that 77% of Wattpad readers are more likely to read regularly updated ongoing stories. The Publishing Scheduler will allow authors to schedule story parts in advance, boosting readers’ engagement and excitement. Advanced scheduling will also save time so they can focus on writing rather than worrying about publishing at the right time.
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