Novel Writing on Edge - Development Notes From Algonkian Writer Conferences

By Chris Stewart It seems every time I read someone's bio for whatever reason they are working on a novel. Everyone and their brother, mother, ex-boyfriend, homeopath, babysitter, work crush, realtor, and massage therapist are writers. It's enough to make you give up and go to law school. We all like to think we have original ideas that will catch an agent's or editor's attention, but do we really? (And how much originality is a good thing? Too much and you're not marketable. Not enough and your ms ends up in the trash. Perhaps that's a subject for another post....) To find out where you fit in, I encourage you to take a field trip to your local bookstore or library and check out the offerings in your genre. This is also a good exercise for those of you out there working on pitches for agents and editors for an upcoming conference (or to use in your query letters). Make sure you bring change for the copier (if you go to the library). You're going to copy som...

By Anthony S. Policastro If you think you spend too much time researching your novel, take a look at NY Times Bestselling author of fourteen novels, Jodi Picoult , who says she spends as much or more time researching a book than writing it. She even went to a remote Eskimo village with no running water in January, the coldest month, to research Eskimo culture for one of her characters. She shares her humorous and enlightening stories on how she came up with the ideas and how she researched three of her favorite novels in the free Writer’s Digest video webcast at the 2007 BookExpo America/Writer’s Digest Books Writers Conference. She is a great spe aker who talks rapidly and gets right to the point so make sure you have 49 minutes to do nothing because you will find that you cannot stop listening. Her best advice is to “write what you’re willing to learn” rather than write what you know. Definitely a must see. Jodi Picoult's latest novel