Sometimes the only way to learn is by making mistakes. Sometimes, you get the chance to learn from other people's experiences. I'll add more as I find things that I wish I would have learned more quickly.
On slush piles and rejection:
Tues, June 14th blog: It’s like the Valentine’s Day Massacre here...I got backed up on submissions and am now trying to clear out the works. It’s not a pretty sight.
No offense writers, but we need to be harder on you. YOU need to be harder on you. First drafts shouldn’t cut it. Dialogue manacled in cliché shouldn’t cut it. Inauthentic genre books plotted and detailed from Hollywood movies and not hardcore, intensive research shouldn’t cut it. Voiceless narrative without the punch of imaginative personality shouldn’t cut it.
Dave Long, editor, Bethany House Publishing
On 'the rules':
Good writers are free to break the rules of grammar, but their freedom gains meaning when they know the rules and overrule them only for an artistic or polemical reason.
William Safire, NYT column, May 2, 2005
On storytelling:
"All good stories begin and end in the same place…in the heart of a man or a woman.”
Narrator from the movie, Last of the Dogmen
On the physical act of writing:
“Starting is the hard part.” Stuart Woods
On selling:
In a year's time, I probably get between 200 and 300 submissions. I may sign up anywhere between four and eight books a year, so that should give you a good idea of what the percentages are.
That's not the way that any of the editors who work here look at it from the outset though. It's not that only a certain percentage of submissions have a chance of being books that we publish. You have to approach every project as a potential book that you will publish, otherwise you're too jaded.
Rachel Kramer Bussel, editor of The Lovely Bones
April 12, 2005, Mediabiastro.com
On dialogue:
Good dialogue is very important to a story because the words you choose says as much about the speaker as it imparts information.
Author Elmore Leonard
On voice:
Voice is your vision, it is your emotional truth, the way you put a sentence on the page, the rhythm of your paragraphs. What it is not is the voice of your characters.
Author Megan Chance
On writing to the market:
It’s unlikely you’ll be able to turn a story about a woman caring for her dying mother into a lighthearted chick-lit novel simply because the genre is hot.
Dave Long, editor, Bethany House Publishing, Thurs. Sept 29, 05