Michelle Witte's Blog, page 3
August 27, 2013
Openings that Don’t Get Me Excited
Let’s start at the very beginning. It’s a very good place to start. Or not. Thing is, how your novel opens is vital to telling the rest of your story. Start in the wrong place, and you might never catch a reader’s attention enough to get them to more than just skim the first few pages. […]
August 18, 2013
Big Isn’t Always Better
Publishing is in flux. Anyone who pays attention to the industry knows that. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. With change comes opportunity, and some of the smaller independent publishers out there are in a prime position to innovate and try different strategies that the big guys don’t have the flexibility to do. So […]
July 10, 2013
Writers Don’t Have to Blog
I was reminded again recently of a discussion I started a year ago about writers blogging about writing. The original tweet that started the discussion: I wish more writers would blog/tweet about things OTHER THAN WRITING. When you’ve READ as many as I have, they all start to blend together Yes, it could have been [...]
May 9, 2013
Avert Your Eyes
In honor of the imminent release of The Faker’s Guide to the Classics: Everything You Need to Know About the Books You Should Have Read (But Didn’t), I will now disembowel some of the greatest of the greats, highlighting their tragic endings with pithy commentary. (Spoiler: Scroll down to see how you can win a copy [...]
April 28, 2013
More than romance
This was originally a comment I made on the HuffPost article “Lovesick and Tired: Unnecessary Romance in YA,“ but it encapsulates my thoughts on romance and relationships within YA that I’m reposting it here. YA literature is, at its heart, about relationships. That doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be romantic ones. Some of the most beautiful [...]
February 14, 2013
Copyright
Timeline of Copyright Anything before 1923: Public domain for all! From 1923 to 1963: Go forth and research: Catalog of Copyright Author had to refile for copyright after 28 years. If they didn’t, have at it. Their copyright has since expired. If they did refile, it extended copyright for an additional 67 years, for a total of 95 years. [...]
January 16, 2013
New Adult
If you participate at all in the online YA writing community, you’ve undoubtedly heard the term New Adult (NA) bandied about. For those unfamiliar with the term, they’re basically Novels for the 18–25 set, often college-bound, but almost always dealing with the challenges and vagaries of experiencing life on their own for the first time. [...]
September 25, 2012
Literary matchmaker
For some odd reason, every time I try to come up with a title for blog posts, a related song pops into my head. Today’s edition? Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match . . . Why this song? you might ask. Because I consider one of my most important responsibilities as a literary agent to [...]
July 15, 2012
Why YA needs strong female characters
I’ve kept largely quiet on the commotion surrounding comedian Daniel Tosh and a woman in the audience who said he joked about how funny it would be if she were gang raped. The resulting debate is disturbing in many ways,* as the (largely male) negative response shows the pervading rape culture is going strong and [...]
July 2, 2012
Am I doing enough?
I would consider myself a fairly accepting individual, with friends from various places around the world, but every single time I get a bit cocky and think, “Pshh, I know how to be color-blind. No need to lecture me,” something happens (either that I stupidly did or saw in the world around me) to make [...]
