Archive for the ‘The Business of Writing’ Category

7 Reasons Fiction Writers Should Sell Nonfiction

by Carol Ottolenghi This article first appeared in Speculations. Copyright © 1997 by Carol Ottolenghi. All rights reserved. Most of us, unless we’re independently wealthy, wring our writing time from those moments between job, family, and basic living obligations. So, if it’s fiction you yearn to produce, why waste any of that precious time writing […]

A Writer’s Guide to Understanding the Copyeditor

by Terry McGarry Originally appeared in the Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Spring 1995. Copyright © 1995 Terry McGarry. Reprinted with permission. Many copyeditors prefer to spell the word “copyeditor.” I laughed when I got page proofs of a short story I had written about a copyeditor: the anthology’s copyeditor […]

Doyle’s YA SF Rant

by Dr. Debra Doyle This rant first appeared in the book review section of hwæt!, my zine for Apanage, a children’s literature apa. Later on, I posted it in the Doyle&Macdonald topic on GEnie’s Science Fiction RoundTable. And after that, it seems to have taken on a life of its own. The Giver (the 1994 […]

The Sobering Saga of Myrtle the Manuscript

From March, 1986, until its untimely demise in February, 1989, I was the Editor-in-Chief of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, and Editorial Director of its “twisted sister” publication, Night Cry. During that time, we received an average of one hundred manuscripts per week, in addition to a backlog of more than 2000 manuscripts left behind by my predecessor.

TANSTAAFL and the Novice Writer

Article by Elizabeth Moon on advice for novice writers. Novice writers have to take some responsibility for their own careers. The good information is NOT that hard to find. The novices who don’t find it–and don’t find it repeatedly–are resisting the truth.