DFW Writers Workshop

"I don't want to work. I don't want to dissect your dialogue. I don't want to wait it out and see if you're going to get to the point. I want you to get to the point." Anne Lamott will follow a writer anywhere…as long as they don't bore her or confuse her along the way. "You can do anything if you can get away with it, if you don't lose me." She then issues a warning: “A confused or a bored reader is an antagonistic reader."

‘Moon’ is capitalized when referring to Earth’s Moon. It’s lowercase when you’re referring to other moons, or the verb. <peach emoji>

Jon Yaged runs Macmillan, one of the five biggest publishers in the world, so I asked him to explain the book publishing industry to me. My main question: why should authors work with a traditional publisher, especially when self-publishing is taking off? What I got was a full tour of how book publishing works. Everything from how authors make money, to how publishers choose which books to back, to the traditional vs. self-publishing debate. Timestamps: 2:01 Consolidation in book publishing 4:01 Celebrity books 7:57 The scale of the publishing industry 9:48 How to get your book published 14:15 New York 16:25 Using data to find great books 29:33 How to work with a publisher 31:11 The economics of a book deal 36:42 How sequels work 42:21 Children's books 48:42 Books in Europe vs. America 50:25 Should writers use AI? 1:00:57 How printing works 1:04:52 Book marketing advice 1:09:48 What a publishing CEO does 1:11:06 Audiobooks 1:15:17 Are people getting stupider? 1:18:20 The publisher business model 1:19:08 Macmillan I've shared the full interview with Jon Yaged below. If you'd rather watch or listen to the interview somewhere else, check out the first reply tweet where I've linked to the interview on YouTube, and also on Apple / Spotify. Enjoy!

A Victorian-era glove flirtation guide

Monthly reminder: Many people have a book in them, but it takes a special kind of freak to leave the Land of Laziness, cross the Plains of Procrastination and Insecurity Mountain, find the Blade of No One Made You Do This, and use it to cut your chest open and yank that book out.

Mr. Darcy began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.

Start your day with some Shakespeare. This is Laurence Olivier reciting Sonnet 116 on The Dick Cavett show in 1973. Absolutely beautiful.