Welcome to this week’s Top Picks Thursday! More roller coaster weather here, but the cold days keeps us inside sniffing out writerly links for you.
Philip Pullman asserts that “children need art and stories and poems and music as much as they need love and food and fresh air and play.”
You can help transcribe World War I love letters.
Stephanie Young takes us inside the world of feminist bookstores.
Learn about Library Hand, the fastidiously neat penmanship style made for library card catalogues.
CRAFT
Beginning are tough. Chuck Sambuchino gathers advice from literary agents on how to start your novel.
Once you’ve gotten started, Jami Gold shows how to achieve story immersion for your readers.
Erika W. Smith has praise for the bossy big sisters of fiction.
Casey Griffin urges you to push your boundaries and write outside your box. If you do, though, Natalia Sylvester discusses using sensitivity readers—what they are and how to hire one.
Jane Friedman reminds us that we don’t have to finish every story we start, and Nathan Bransford asks us to ponder if we even want to win the game we’re killing ourselves playing.
BUSINESS
Smashwords CEO Mark Coker identifies 10 trends in publishing.
If you are seeking an agent, beware these 34 agent pet peeves. Janet Reid discusses what counts as a substantial revision. And agent Carlisle Webber of Fuse Literary is looking for high-concept commercial fiction in middle grade, young adult, and adult.
Everything we put online or on our book jacket is part of our marketing effort. Anne R. Allen asks if your author bio helps your book sales or stops them dead, and Lisa Tener shows how to get bestselling authors to write blurbs, forewords, and Amazon reviews.
THE UNIQUE SHELF
Do you love all things Seuss? Meet Dr. Suess’ imaginary daughter named Chrysanthemum-Pearl, and visit the original Lorax tree in San Diego.
Read the final letter written by poet John Keats.
A picture is worth… Check out how A Wrinkle In Time looks as a map, a photo of 16-year-old future author Agatha Christie on a visit to Paris in 1906, and the absolutely essential Oxford comma.
Researchers get to the bottom of mysteries. A multi-spectral analysis of the manuscript of Margery Kempe’s autobiography reveals a recipe that likely treated the Medieval mystic’s symptoms, and nosy researchers are trying to re-create the vintage smell of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York.
What’s this? An abandoned Hobbit castle in rural England? Or is it the world’s most eccentric sheep barn?
That’s all for this week’s Top Picks Thursday! See you next week for more links to all things wordy.
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