Advice For Writers

I am frequently asked for advice — often in a tweet. I have no magic words to transmit in 140 characters, but if you're serious about writing, I have a lot of ideas.

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If some of the categories here sound Greek — (What's a query letter?) — then I suggest you start with one of the books or overviews down there. Publishing is a complex business, and can be baffling at first, but those links are to people who are great at sorting it out.

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If you're just getting started writing, I highly recommend a writing course to start. Writing is something you have to plunge in and do, but you can plunge randomly, or find a (human) guide. A great guide, who can help you unlock your own talent, and push you in ways you never imagined — that's priceless. If you're really serious, you should probably move on to a writing program afterward, but depending where you're at, that might be down the road.

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I was unsure about quitting my job to immerse in a writing program, so I got my feet wet with an adult ed course at SMU when I was a computer consultant in Dallas. It met once a week in the evening, so it didn't interfere with work. Within weeks I wished I had tried that years ago, and started planning how to wrap up my career and transition to a full-time writing program. Testing the waters was key.

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Start here

You probably want to start with one of these summaries from me:

• My best (brief) writing advice.

• My in-depth Poynter Q&A on writing and reporting trauma and Columbine.

• How to break into publishing.

Editor/Publisher Jonathan Karp's advice

•  This is so good it deserves its own category, and should likely be your starting point. Jonathan Karp: amazing interview in Poets & Writers. This should be required reading at every MFA program, or for anyone considering the field. Jon is one of the great visionaries of publishing and I was lucky to have him as both publisher and editor of Columbine. He is now publisher of Simon & Schuster.

 

Writing

• My best advice on writing (my thoughts, captured by agent Rachelle Gardner on her blog).

• Two essential books for people writing books:

  • Betsy Lerner's The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers

  • Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. (Great for narrative nonfiction writers, too. Same concepts.)

• What my mentor Lucia Berlin taught me. I lay out some of both Lucia's and my key writing advice in this essay for Vanity Fair.

• A place to write: why you need one (coming).

• MFA or not MFA. Short answer: usually.

• Great advice from Martin Amis.

 

Reporting

• My Poynter Institute Q&A on covering tragedy and trauma (and reporting in general): "After Las Vegas shooting, a Columbine expert offers heartfelt advice about the why of it all." (I added this to the Start Here section as well.)

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Interviewing

Advice summaries I created for the Yale journo program:

• What Makes Them Tell? My 10 Interview Tips.

• Mechanics: My Interview Tips.

• Roles sources can play (and why that matters).

 

Getting Published

Summary

• How to break into publishing. A quick summary I composed to help a friend trying to break into the biz. (This also disappeared. I'll see if I can find the file I used to create it.)

• How to get published. Agent Rachelle Gardner's excellent summary, with more details and links.

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Agent websites with great advice

• If you want to publish with a major publisher, you need an agent. These three sites have permanent links with good advice on how to go about finding one. They are a great place to start:

  • Betsy Lerner (my agent)

  • Nathan Bransford

  • Rachelle Gardner

 

Selling your book: Using the web / social media

• Creating a primary website: My evolution over 10 years.

• WSJ: How Authors Move Their Own Merchandise (books). The Jan 2011 piece could use a lot more meat—more details and more analysis of what works—but it's a very good start. And I think we're still figuring out what works.

• Every author should be on Goodreads, preferably active months or years before your book comes out. If you love books, it's a natural anyway.  Penguin Random created a great primer: "How to Connect with Fans on Goodreads" in 2017. And my Goodreads profile will give you a sense of how I use it.

 

Pitch letters

(Also known as query letters.) Here are the best brief how-to guide's I've found:

• Query Letter Mad Lib: Ignore the cute title. This is a great intro post, that lays out what a query should be, with everything to leave in and out. It's agent Nathan Bransford, who has a great reputation on this stuff.

• Examples of a Good Query Letter: Three great examples, with analysis, by agent Nathan Bransford.

• How to Write a Query Letter: A slightly different approach, by agent Rachelle Gardner.

• 23 Successful agent query letters: From GalleyCat.

• For related links, see the margins of all those posts. The agents who created them have all sorts of great links in their sidebars.