Lily Iona MacKenzie's Blog, page 6
September 16, 2024
Revision Hubris
Okay, I’ve been writing for longer than I care to remember, but I still can convince myself (arrogant? yes!) that I don’t need feedback from other writers. This attitude tends to take over when I’ve spent considerable time working on something, as I had with a memoir I’ve written. After all, it’s my story I’m …
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September 9, 2024
ON FINDING AN AGENT!
Okay, so you’ve accomplished the impossible. An agent has expressed interest in your work and you’ve signed a contract. All those months (maybe years) of sending out your novel have paid off. Not only do you have an agent, but she’s in New York, on Park Avenue. A respectable established firm. Now what? You wait. …
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September 2, 2024
Huge thanks to Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop for this excellent piece on “How, What and When Book Authors Get Paid”
The Royal(ty) Lesson I’m reposting this newsletter that I sent out over a year ago in case some of my newer readers missed it. I continue to get questions on the royalty system, both in traditional publishing, and in the newer forms from independent presses to hybrid to self-publishing. I hope this math lesson helps …
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August 19, 2024
Let the imagination lead!
In addition to writing adult fiction and non-fiction, I also create pieces for children. Recently, I tried to start a children’s story of a girl sleeping in an elegant dollhouse based on a dream image that has stayed with me. But after a few sentences, I felt extremely critical of what I’d written. I had …
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August 12, 2024
A high-school dropout and a single parent at sixteen, my ...
A high-school dropout and a single parent at sixteen, my options were severely limited. I had a son to raise on my own, and I received no child support from his father. A quick learner, I parlayed the typing skills I had learned in my high school commercial course (it was assumed then that most …
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August 5, 2024
Thanks to Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop for sharing her thoughts on “How One Book Can Lead to Another”: From Genealogy to Memoir
HOW ONE BOOK CAN LEAD TO ANOTHER From Genealogy to Memoir In 2007, I published Counting on Grace, a work of historical fiction that told the story of a 12-year-old mill worker, a girl who “doffed” the bobbins in a textile mill in North Pownal, Vermont. My character was inspired by this photograph of a textile …
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July 22, 2024
Writers or magicians?
Fiction writers have been called many things, but magician seems to me the best description. They dip into the black hat of their imagination and produce an endless variety of characters, situations, images, genres, events, and styles. The effect on readers is nothing less than magical, the reader also becoming a magician, assisting in making …
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July 15, 2024
What goes into a novel’s complex journey
Pen-l Publishing released my second novel, Freefall: A Divine Comedy in 2019. Recently, I’ve been thinking about its evolution, a reminder of the kind of journey we undertake when we start writing a novel. The road to the moment of publishing Freefall was a long one. When I reviewed my notes for Freefall (I keep …
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July 8, 2024
Writers as Thieves
When I picked up Marguerite Duras’ The Lover, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew she was considered one of France’s most important literary figures, but The Lover was the first work of hers that I had read. The back cover claims that The Lover is “an exquisite jewel of a novel,” but it’s …
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July 1, 2024
Join me in celebrating the 9th birthday of my first novel FLING!’S release, a wildly comic romp on mothers, daughters, art, and travel!
My novel Fling, a wildly comic romp on mothers, daughters, art, and travel, was published in July 2015. What happens in Fling? Feather, an aging hippie, returns to her Calgary home to help her mother, Bubbles, celebrate her 90th birthday. Bubbles has received mail from the dead letter office in Mexico City, asking her to pick up her mother’s ashes, …
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