Writing
Eric San Juan
December 17, 2009
Wow. This juvenile meltdown by a published author is making the rounds on the Internet right now, and it’s great reading. The gist is simple: reviewer on Amazon.com gives a book a bad review, the author responds to the review, and total bugfuck hilarity ensues. The author descends into a meltdown laden with conspiracy theories, secret supporters (none of whom we actually see), and a seemingly insatiable need to dig their hole ever deeper. If you at all like watching train wrecks, this is fantastic morning entertainment. I just can’t fathom what’s going through someone’s head when they do this. Even major authors sometimes fall prey to it. Someone doesn’t like your work? Fine. That’s part of writing. You feel like you want to respond?…
Read more
Eric San Juan
December 10, 2009
One of my favorite bloggers on writing and the publishing industry, literary agent Nathan Bransford, recently made an excellent post about dealing with criticism. Excellent reading for any and all aspiring writers. Confronting a critique or criticism need not be a gut-wrenching trial. It can, and should, be a valuable learning experience. One of the first and most difficult hurdles on the road to publication is learning to cope with criticism. Yet you must. No matter how good you think you are, criticism is inevitable. It is also vital to your growth as a writer. The ability to solicit critiques knowing they will poke holes in your work, and to then listen to said critiques objectively and with an open mind, is one of the…
Read more
Eric San Juan
December 8, 2009
This piece from The New Yorker is well worth reading if you’re on the wrong side of 35. Which probably sounds pretty insulting to people on the wrong side of 35, but keep in mind that I am one of you. Which is why my bones ache. And I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night. And I want those damn kids off my lawn. Anyway, this excellent piece notes, “Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity—doing something truly creative, we’re inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth.” But does it? Not according to University of Chicago economist David Galenson: (Galenson) looked through forty-seven major poetry anthologies published since 1980 and counted the poems…
Read more
Eric San Juan
December 2, 2009
So I’m writing last night, plugging away at my work in progress. Working on this major action sequence, a series of four or five brief chapters that (hopefully) string together like a Spielberg setpiece. Think the truck scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Minority Report and you have the idea. And right in the middle of it, this character … he died. I didn’t expect him to die. Hadn’t included it in my outline. Hadn’t plotted for it. But he’s there and this situation arises and I realized as I was writing, “He’s not going to make it, is he?” And he died. I don’t regret the unexpected death. Turned out to be the ideal resolution to his story arc. The exact place…
Read more
Eric San Juan
November 20, 2009
In a previous blog post I pointed out that authors do not make a lot of money. And that’s true. They don’t. The reality is that you DON’T simply write a book and watch the money start coming in. Not unless you hit a one-in-a-million publisher feeding frenzy for your book or accidentally write the next Harry Potter. Instead, you write a book that will eventually provide you with a modest amount of money — and “modest” may very well mean, “enough to finally get that tune-up you’ve been putting off” — then you do another, and another, and another, because if you don’t you’ll have to get a day job. Which is something most authors have, anyway. Literary agent Rachelle Gardner recently did a…
Read more
