How to Write and Publish Children's Books
There’s something I’d like to clear up about working with a literary agent: their job is to sell your already-polished work to a publisher. Their job isn’t to help you develop a half-baked idea or to provide free editorial services. Granted, when I was an agent, I loved the editorial process of working with a manuscript. …
Continue reading “Working With a Literary Agent: What to Expect”
Last week, Christa asked the following question about literary agent revision (edited slightly): What are revisions are usually like between agent and writer? Are there common mistakes you see with each client, or does it vary? What is most revised, usually, or is it all over the board? And what kind of turn around time …
Continue reading “Inside the Literary Agent Revision Process”
Do you know how to finish a novel? Producing a complete manuscript is hard, and it’s where many writers get stuck. Here’s an interesting trend I’ve noticed in queries versus the full manuscript. At my agency, we request the first 10 pages along with the query in our submission guidelines. That’s great for me because, …
Here’s a question from LS about how to become a novelist and make a writing career: I’ve been writing for a few years (I’m 17) and I know I want to be an author. It’s all I want to do but I know my writing needs work – a lot of work. I’ve heard from …
Continue reading “How To Become A Novelist and Build A Writing Career”
More writers should be wondering how to write action scenes. Because the more action sequences I read, the more I’m convinced that they’re the Achilles’ heel of even the most seasoned writer (with the exception of thriller writers, of course). Lovely and agile prose sometimes tends to fall apart when an action sequence is called …
If you’re wondering how to revise a novel with an eye towards trimming the fat, this post is for you. There’s almost nothing harder than “killing your babies” and axing chunks of your writing. Everybody loves their writing. It’s always hard to lose a word here, a line there, sometimes an entire paragraph. But cutting makes …
About Me and Kidlit.com Kidlit.com is an ongoing project for the passionate community of people who read and write children’s literature. My name is Mary Kole. I was a literary agent for five years with the Andrea Brown Literary Agency and Movable Type Management. My book on writing children’s books is WRITING IRRESISTIBLE KIDLIT. I …