where deadly meets fabulous
Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Most things I do, experience, clean the dishes, revise budgets, edit my manuscript, have a distinct goal in mind. Money. Fitness. Clean counters. But not for this. I have spent probably hundreds of hours creating posts for my blog with no clear outcome in mind. Sometimes I think I […]
Read MoreI wrote a memoir manuscript once. It wasn’t very good. I could tell when one of the teen readers I work-shopped it with scrunched up her nose and said she just didn’t connect with the voice. Years later I finally understand what it was lacking. It’s the same thing that makes ‘evil-doing’ characters into ones that […]
Read MoreI finally figured out why writing query letters sucks (and I mean aside from the repeated stick-in-my-chest rejections): boredom. I have sent out twenty slightly-modified versions of the same query letter as of last week and frankly I’m tired of it. In fact, I think I may have a brown on my hands. According to […]
Read MoreI was recently rejected by a literary agency. It went something like this: “The pages you sent are well-written and enjoyable, but unfortunately, J did not connect to the story as much as she was hoping to, and so she will not be offering representation” Of course, this happens a lot these days but this […]
Read MoreBecause sending emails with missing attachments, pocket updating my Facebook status with such as gems as ‘Jackie is slkdjfsldf’ and broken links on my LinkedIn account weren’t enough I have recently been introduced to a whole new arena of potentially damaging electronic embarrassment: the query letter. Misspelling agency names, classifying my work in the wrong […]
Read MoreEvery cloud has a silver lining—or, in this case–a set of bare, chiseled abs. Entrenched in the dreaded manuscript-flog-phase I have spent the last few weeks researching agencies, compiling query letters and then receiving rejections from said query letters. And though it can be a little disheartening to read an inbox full of “Its […]
Read MoreSure, a writer writes, but is there more to it than that? Reading Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write, I have started to wonder if being a writer is also about seeing the world in a particular way—being present to what is happening around you, observing details that others might gloss over, and when […]
Read MoreOn one block I see the windows through which scores of young women once leapt to their deaths, fire driving them from factory floor to the cool of the open air…someone else who remembers place white roses on the sidewalk (Brooks, In the City).” In my attempt to be more mindful of the world around […]
Read MoreMounting phone bills. That bitchy friend who raised her eyebrows when I announced was going to be a Great Novelist in grade ten. Pure fatigue. Though I call it Writer’s Block, the forces keeping my from sitting down at the computer and working on my manuscript are more akin to a mosh pit of baby […]
Read MoreI have been carrying some pretty heavy writer guilt around lately—and I don’t mean heavy as an office water cooler, I’m talking heavy as-an-Assembly-on-Drunk-Driving, plus the whole damn Mulligan delivery truck. Despite managing to spend plenty of time getting all wet and sandy with my three-year-old, several months have passed and I still haven’t produced […]
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Book reviews, the occasional rant, and more
Rachel Rueben: The Publishing Blogger & Author
