3 November 2014 - What's new
3 November 2014
- There are no less than two Writing Opportunities this week, together with a News Review looking at prizes and competitions and five links to the top stories of the week.
- 'The growth of literary prizes of one kind and another seems unending, although it's a pity from the point of view of unpublished writers that so many of them are restricted to books which have come from traditional publishers. WritersServices doesn't usually feature these, on the basis that they already get plenty of publicity and it is usually publishers rather than writers who have to do the submission...' News Review on Prizes, prizes and competitions.
- Pressing deadlines mean that we have two Wriitng Opportunities this week. The first is the 2014 National Novel Writing Month, which has already started as the month is November. You'll need to get your skates on for this one if you're to complete a 50,000 word novel is just one month!
- The second Writing Opportunity is the ITV This Morning Novel Writing Competition, which is open to unrepresented and unpublished authors living in the UK. The first prize will be representation for the winning novel from a Curtis BrownSee Curtis Brown listing agent and a free place on one of Curtis Brown Creative's six-month novel-writing courses.
- Writing biography and autobiography is a three-part excerpt from the book by Brian D Osborne which provides a starting-point for memoir.
- ‘That thing of treating the writer like a famous boxer or a rock star has harmed writers, because one of the ingredients most essential for writing is that you have to be solitary. You can't be gregarious. You can't do both. The brain won't take it. That is why poor Mrs Woolf went off her rocker. Too many people, too much outside life...' Edna O'Brien, author of The Country Girls and Country Girl (an autobiography) in the Independent on Sunday, quoted in our Comment column.
- If you want to browse across the WritersServices site, Advice for writers helps you find what you're looking for.
- Our links this week: in a characteristically outspoken interview, the US super-agent known as the Jackal gives his take on Amazon and the publishing world, Andrew Wylie talks about the state of the publishing industry - Quill and Quire; a blogger who takes an individual view asks if publishers do have a use, Dr. Syntax: Do Publishers Deserve to Exist? an authoritative article on the important subject of copyright, BookBrunch - Speak up for copyright; where is fan fiction going now, From ‘Fifty Shades' to ‘After': why publishers want fan fiction to go mainstream - The Washington Post; and , in an article on YouTube opportunities written for publishers but useful to writers, Your Tube | The Bookseller.
- Finding it difficult to write your own synopsis for your submission or your blurb for your self-published book? Our Synopsis-writing and Blurb-writing services can help.
- ‘Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.' Robertson Davies in our Writers' Quotes.
- The October Magazine is ready!
