Yesterday I taught my first Guardian Masterclass of the year on how to pitch your book. The next is on 23rd February (click Guardian Masterclass for details). A question students always ask is: what exactly do agents want? It is easier to answer than you might think. Of course everyone
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This article first appeared in Mslexia Autumn 2012 Finding time to write can be hard, especially when you have to fit it into already packed schedules. Danuta Kean marvels at how women writers get so much done Over the past two months I have written four 2,000-word features (not including this),
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Mslexia always has a feature about a big subject that affects readers. As I was editor of the autumn issue, I chose to write about how women writers keep so many plates spinning and how to stop everything crashing to the ground. It clearly hit the spot. One reader summed
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Have you noticed a disturbing trend in your teenager’s reading material lately? Has a change from lively and engaging child into sullen and difficult teenager coincided with them ditching adventures by the likes of Lauren Child or Michael Morpurgo for bleak futuristic fantasies about violent 16-year-olds or grimly realistic tales
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I hate that word ‘juggling’. Not because it doesn’t describe the frantic activity that consumes the lives of many of us, but because, well, when you juggle, you are usually holding onto one ball at a time. Everyone I know who ‘juggles’ – and I don’t just mean mothers of
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Why do badly written books become bestsellers? It’s a question that banged against my consciousness as I tried to read 50 Shades of Grey, E L James’s unintentionally hilarious erotic fanfic tribute to Twilight. An ebook, it has become a self-publishing phenomenon, earning the British author an eye-watering advance from
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I am going to have a rant. Sorry, but after this weekend, I need one. What is the point of offering choice when those choices are ignored? That is the question I was left asking after the local education authority refused my child – among others – a place at
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A friend of mine is a therapist and says you should always charge clients. If you don’t, she tells me, they take your work for granted and the sessions are a waste of time. I wish somebody would tell this to the myriad events organisers who think professional writers gain
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Was it a full moon on Friday? I ask, because the trolls were out, and four friends blocked people on Twitter following abusive tweets. All are in the business – high profile authors and literary agents. I am telling you because their night of the trolls highlights one of the
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‘Rejection.’ Nothing cushions the impact of those three syllables. Last week I wrote about how to submit to agents, this week I want to look at the ‘R’ word. How do we turn something so negative – our precious child returned unwanted – into a positive that helps us get
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