Questions are the building blocks of writing. The answers to the questions that you ask are what builds your story.



When it comes to non-fiction writing – journalism in particular – there are the famous 5 Ws which need to be answered in any given news story: Who, What, Where, When, Why. And then, sometimes, it is instructive to add an H – How.



In fiction it is not THAT different: they are the fundamental questions for building a story. And the most basic questions are the… Continue

A reader wrote to me with a series of questions on the writing life, the publishing universe, and everything. Here are some of the things I told her:



Q: What is a book worth, how is it valued? How are authors paid?



What IS a book worth; what is a writer worth; how do you put a price on something this subjective?



What’s an actual physical BOOK worth? Is your $24.95 for a hardcover first edition actually in the ballpark of how much a book is… Continue

A reader wrote to me with a series of questions on the writing life, the publishing universe, and everything. Here are some of the things I told her:



Q: How did you find your agent? What are the lessons learned from getting the right agent? Does the agent represent solely your interests or that of the publisher and you?



Flip to the Acknowledgments page of books that interest you. You will find, many times, that the author will thank their agent in those… Continue

Depending on what writing bible you follow, there are only 3 real plots in the universe – or 12, or 37, or ONE. It doesn’t matter what the number is — the basic idea is distilling EVERY book into its constituent parts



But if you do that, you will reduce practically every book to the same set of criteria in the end. If you pick a book you love and one you loathe and put them both into a pot and boil their bones clean… don’t be surprised that you’ve got two remarkably similar… Continue

A reader wrote to me with a series of questions on the writing life, the publishing universe, and everything. I asked her permission to answer some of them here.



How did you support yourself while you wrote? How did you manage fears about money? What other streams of revenue come from your book?



Writing is a life, not a living. With a small handful of exceptions, no novelist has ever gotten rich off their work. Of course there are self-help book writers who… Continue