Musings of a Writing Life

I ran across another blog for writers today: Julia Temlyn's Musings of a Writing Life. She apparently has not had this blog for long, as she mentions in an early post that she recently made the transition to blogging with Wordpress on her own site. (I should mention that Blogger also allows you host your blog on your own site, and I like my setup very much.) She seems to blog about once a week, and her blogs are usually pretty relevant to writers. However, as a warning, individual posts seem to have some formatting issues, so don't click on individual post titles and expect to read them that way!

Also, through Julia's blog I came across the Book Lust site. It seems pretty interesting, and the What is Nancy Reading? page reminds me a little of a blog I keep on myspace, Livre du Jour (Book of the Day). Except I think Nancy's page is a little more commercially-oriented (whereas mine is just a discussion of whatever I'm reading currently).

In any case, I always love adding more writers blogs to my "Favorites" list! I hope you enjoy adding these as much as I do!

2007 Writers Market

First of all, I need to apologize to my readers - it has been far too long since I posted on this blog. I'm sure by now most of you have found your own books for writers, without my reviews. :o)

Good news, though - tonight I'm stealing a little time away from my other pursuits in order to blog!

The 2007 Writers Market is out. In fact, it has been out some 6 or 8 weeks - I picked it up about a month ago, I think. Apparently, publishing the Writers Market is like selling cars or holiday decorations - it gets earlier and earlier every year. I guess I can't complain, though. After all, it's my neurosis that makes me buy it as soon as I see it sitting on the shelf at Barnes & Noble.

In any case, I spent this evening reading the articles at the beginning of the book. There are all the normal ones - how to format a manuscript, how to write a query letter, how to decide how much to charge. There are also the "fun" articles that vary each years: profiles on and interviews with different freelance writers and authors. Honestly, though, I read the "how to" materials more closely, and just skim the success stories. It's enough for me to just know that somewhere out there, writers are making it on the weight of their words alone.

I also glanced through the publisher listings. It's always comforting to know that my $30 (well, $20-something with my B&N discount) wasn't wasted, and there are new (and deleted) listings contained within the book's many pages. Actually, I don't know if all writers are like this, or if it's just me... But having the newest Writers Market is like having a really heavy, square security blanket. It's like I couldn't actually be a writer without that book sitting on my shelf.

In any case, I have too much work at the moment to consider it, but before long I should start going through the Writers Market listings (as well as the websites I've saved) and start querying for more work.