Newsletter - Publishing is Hard

Do It On Purpose

Time Is Real

It’s the last day of a year of unrelenting nightmares. I don’t need to re-catalogue them here. We’ve all had our own versions of surviving this year and our own versions of supporting our friends and loved ones, of finding new ways to have community, to fight

Drinking from a Poisoned Well

This post was originally published on Sarah Gailey’s newsletter Here’s the Thing for a series they ran on personal canons. You can read the whole series now, for free. Subscribe to access community features like What We Share, which is a series that fosters connections through shared experiences.

Make Shitty Tables

I make a lot of tables. It turns out that a lot of what a person needs is a flat surface to put stuff on. So… tables. Tables for building other things. Tables for eating on. Tables for cooking on. Tables just for coffee. Tables just for computers. Flat surface.

On Anxiety

When I started therapy I told my psychologist that I didn’t experience anxiety. I thought of it as a thing other people indulged in. She is a professional and very good at her job so she did not laugh me out of her office. It turns out I experience

This Is Advice

Writing is hard. There’s no way around that. It’s hard to tell a story, in words, on the page. It’s hard to communicate character, emotion, plot and elicit the response out of an invisible audience. Your tools are limited, the opportunity constrained. It is a skill. A

What We Talk About When We Talk About Canons

The idea of the canon is outdated, colonialist, racist, sexist, and anti-queer. It’s easy to say that this is only true because old stuff is colonialist, racist, sexist, and anti-queer, but that’s a bullshit cop out. People who aren’t white men didn’t suddenly appear, fully formed

First, Be A Fan

This last weekend I had the great privilege and pleasure to see two projects I represented (and one I edited over a decade ago) win Hugo Awards. I had two other clients nominated and, once the full voting came out, several more projects appearing on longlists. It was a good

The Only Lasting Truth Is Change

Recently I watched a livestream of Toshi Reagon’s adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower into a staged opera. It was an early, in-development version of the show recorded in 2015, and it felt special to see such a powerful statement about the material conditions of our

Favorite Openings: A Darker Shade of Magic

The last example I want to dig into is V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic. I wanted something very recent and a genre example but even without those constraints, this is one of my favorite first pages. From the first line I found myself mesmerized by this

Favorite Openings: The Killing Floor

I see a lot of people on my timeline making fun of Lee Child. They mock his prose, his characterizations, his approach. And, yeah, sure, there are things to criticize. But I also think he’s a master stylist and an incredibly effective storyteller. I not so secretly love the

Favorite Openings: The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has what I think is my favorite opening paragraph of any book I’ve read in recent memory. "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some,

The Beginning is a Terrible Place to Start

Whenever I run a crit group, I find myself giving the same recommendation over and over and over again: start your book somewhere else. It seems obvious, right? You start telling your story at the beginning. But, here’s the thing about beginnings, nothing is happening yet. The beginning of

Tension/Action

I had a Twitter thread recently about novel openings and people kept dming me being like “write a newsletter about this” and I kept responding “I already did!” Narrator voice: He had not. There’s a bunch of stuff I touch on in the thread but the one I wanted

Making Art in a Crisis

Hopefully, you’re home social distancing yourself.* A nice euphemism for quarantine. In New York city we’re under a “pause” order which strongly encourages us to stay at home and all non-essential businesses have been shut down. Here’s what I’m going to tell you about making art

Thriving in the Plague Times

The Writing Game: Play to Find Out What Happens

At the heart of every tabletop rpg is improv. There’s that beautiful sweet moment when a player zags when you expected a zig. When the GM sees a window of opportunity to introduce pure unplanned chaos into the situation. When the dice come up snake eyes and leave a

As Above, So Below

Write Your Way Out

So You Want to Work in Publishing

First off… don’t. It’s hard. And terrible. Just kidding. I actually hate it when people are like “don’t work in this industry, kid!” and then justify it by being all “well if they are that easily discouraged, then they weren’t going to cut it.” Because here’

On Endings

I hate endings. Well, hate isn’t the right word. I just don’t care about them. It’s my big weakness as an editor. I’m obsessed with beginnings. Starting on the right note. Setting the stage. Arranging the world just so. But conclusions? I’m already on to

On Taste

On Making Lists

We are coming up on the end of 2019. This is bullshit. Who approved this? I would like to speak to the manager. Why is this happening to me? *ahem* Sorry. End of the year is a time of reflection. It’s a time for us all to look back

The Poetics of Surprise: Knives Out

The Poetics of Surprise: Parasite

Parasite: the Subterranean Subtext [This newsletter contains spoilers for Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.] Parasite is a difficult film to talk about. It’s mercurial, slippery. Like all of Bong Joon-ho’s work, it refuses to be reduced into a single genre, a single category. Family drama, horror film, comedy, taut

The Poetics of Surprise: Pain and Glory

The Poetics of Surprise

SPOILER WARNING: This essay is going to unabashedly spoil the shit out of Pain and Glory, Parasite, and Knives Out. You have been warned. I generally don’t get the big deal about spoilers. I mean, I respect them because I know people get mad if you don’t and

The Writing Game: How to Front

[This is an occasional series that is ostensibly about the craft of writing but is in fact a very unsubtle excuse to talk about how much I love tabletop roleplaying games.] I ran a short Dungeon World game this weekend and it was glorious. Dungeon World is kind of like

Stay Positive

In case you didn’t get it from the name, this newsletter can be a little harsh sometimes. I aim to talk about the dustier corners of the business, to shine a light on some of the more difficult aspects, to help writers understand what they’re getting into so

Get Jigae With It

I really like Korean food. I didn’t always, but as an adult I’ve learned to appreciate the food of my people. From the rich, briney stews to the sweet, unctuous grilled meats, to the bright funky bite of kimchi. The bubbling, volcanically hot, bright red stews in stone

The Empathy Gap

A friend pointed out to me recently, when I rolled my eyes at a publishing kerfuffle, that I was like a professional chef in a kitchen. I get burned every day. I have scars up and down my arms from hot pans, sharp knives, slamming walk-in doors, splattering oil. And

Write Better Books

On Education

I’m just back from a week at sea on a boat full of writers as part of the Writing Excuses Retreat and Workshop. Writing Excuses is a podcast hosted by some dear friends of mine and I’ve had the pleasure of being a guest host, repeat speaker on

On Sending the Elevator Back Down

I was introduced to the phrase “send the elevator back down” probably about ten years ago now. A friend and I were talking about a specific person of enormous power and status in the industry. They also came from a marginalized background. I’ve never seen this person speak on

A Personal Catalogue of Fictional Asians Who Were Important To Me: Jubilee

The Writing Game: Have An Agenda

Like books, all games have an agenda. Sometimes they're subtle things that lie in the gaps of things. Lines of power that run from rule to rule to player to GM. Sometimes it's in the worldbuilding. What is an orc anyhow? What is the agenda of

The Selling Season

The Writing Game: Prep Work

There are lots of ways to write books. There are lots of ways to run games. I listen to a lot of actual play podcasts, well three, but it’s a lot of hours: Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, and Friends at the Table. All three of them provide such

Living in Dry Times

How to Invest in Bad Ideas

Editing is Hard

The Safety in Being Scared

On Writing Conferences

I’ve been to a lot of writing conferences and workshops this year. I’ve been to seven so far: * Grub Street’s Muse and the Marketplace * Writer’s League of Texas * 4th St Fantasy * Highlights Foundation * Futurescapes * SCBWI Las Vegas * Las Vegas Writer’s Conference Coming up I have:

The Writing Game

It’s not exactly a secret that I’m a huge nerd. But recently, I feel like I crossed a rubicon into deeper, obsessive nerdery than ever before: I started playing a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. I played a little growing up with my older brother — weird little homebrew

Nonplussed

How to Have a Voice

I have a subscribers-only Q+A thread running and it’s been an absolute delight. The questions I’ve been getting and the discussion that ensues makes me feel like we’re building a small community here and one that is thoughtful and engaged in interesting ways. I wanted to

How to Launch a Book

[note: I accidentally sent this only to free recipients so I’m reposting this for everyone. Apologies for those of you who got this twice!] I have eight book launches happening before the end of July. I’m sure there are many agents out there who regularly have more, but

Magic Lessons

Kill for the Story

Sympathy for the Villain

*an extra post this week that’s a version of a short piece I wrote for the Highlights Foundation in advance of a workshop I’m teaching along with superstar editor Tiffany Liao, writer, former editor, and genius behind POC in Publishing, Patrice Caldwell, and the incredible novelist Julie C.

On Wishlists

I get asked all the time, by editors, by other agents, by friends, but most of all by writers: “what are you looking for?” Here’s the big secret, folks: I have no idea. Okay, let’s talk a bit about how this all works. As a publishing professional, my

Musings on Reader Expectations

Publishing is Slow

I’m fully in conference travel season now: I’m just back from Boston for the Grub Street Muse and the Marketplace conference and the Futurescapes workshop out in Utah. I’ll be at the Las Vegas Writer’s conference in May and doing SCBWI in Las Vegas the same

Shit Sandwich

on the preferred methods of delivering feedback

What We Talk About When We Talk About Advances

On Branding

The Publishing Question

The longer I’m in this business the more I become convinced nearly every decision in the long process of publishing a book can be reduced to one single question: “who is this for?” It’s a simple question but one that’s far reaching in its consequences and nuanced

Nothing Matters / Everything Matters

Or the Secret to Publishing a Bestseller

Rejection Sucks

My life is defined by rejection. My days are shaped by the steady, unceasing rhythm of no. The term gatekeeper gets applied to me and my peers a lot. The idea that we’re manning the gates of culture, saying no to people who want to pass through is a

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