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Channel: Dystel & Goderich Literary Management » words
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Scribbling.

As I was trying to think of something wildly interesting and exciting to write about today, I found myself scribbling nonsense phrases and words that look pretty when written all over the little pad of...

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Writer’s block of ice cream sandwich board room

They say that the cure for writer’s block is to simply sit down, put pen to paper and go—no overthinking, no thinking at all, really. Stream of consciousness writing, however, I still find difficult....

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Writing well is important

You might look at the title of this post and then higher up at the masthead of this blog and think, “Duh!”  Well, yes, a literary agency blog post that states something as obvious as “writing well is...

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Clichéd clichés

Full disclosure:  I’m on vacation as of end of business tomorrow.  I need this vacation like oxygen.   As a matter of fact, my brain is functioning as if it’s a bit oxygen starved right about now. As a...

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One day I’m going to want to use the word “growlery.”

The Oxford English Dictionary is getting too big. Those people at Oxford who decide all about what words are actually words and what are just silly sounds people make when they talk are in a fix. They...

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Diagramming Sentences

John McPhee’s essay “Progression” in The New Yorker http://byliner.com/john-mcphee/stories/progression takes an interesting look at the process of writing.  At one point, McPhee expressed the structure...

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What’s your favorite line?

I’m reading a new middle grade novel from a client, and I came across a line I just love. In it, he is describing a pack of dogs on the attack: “They were a boiling wave of flailing paws and arching...

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Getting the Words Right.

A published author and a Facebook friend posted the following exchange to her profile, excerpted from a Paris Review Interview with Ernest Hemingway. INTERVIEWER How much rewriting do you do? HEMINGWAY...

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Which or that and other gripes about grammar

The question of “which” versus “that” came up when I drafted my last blog post and the person editing my post took a stab at which one she thought it should be but then suggested I double check. Here’s...

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Bookscapes

It’s impossible to quantify the power of books.  Books are comfort, knowledge, strength, humor, heartache, faith, experience, society, joy…and pretty much everything else you want to ascribe to them....

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A book can change your life

The title of this post might be overly dramatic, but if you look hard enough you will find some pretty incredible stories about people whose lives were changed by books and reading. One of those...

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Read this piece (aka more on Stephen King)!

I am really not obsessed with Stephen King. I do think he’s amazing and a genius, and I’d like to spend a day living inside his brain, but I really don’t follow his every move. Which is why it’s kind...

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The dead zone

This time of the year in publishing is affectionately known as the dead zone.  Everyone is either on vacation or too busy catching up on the piles that grew while they were beachside somewhere to...

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Look it up!

Remember that corny cliché about every book ever written being found within the pages of a dictionary?  I’ve always gotten such a kick out of that because I love dictionaries.  I love the tiny print,...

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Beware of Homophones

  Faithful readers of this blog know that I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to grammar/spelling errors in a query. Some agents don’t mind but it’s a big distraction for me. And one of the mistakes...

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A Verbal Confession

My brother is taking a course in professional writing that is required for his criminal justice degree…and I’ve been receiving panicked phone calls at random times asking for explanations of various...

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