Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 239

Writing Memoir: Peering Into Memories and Mary Karr's Life

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Today's guest post is by the incredible Darrelyn Saloom, who is working on a memoir
with boxer champion Deirdre Gogarty. Follow
Darrelyn on Twitter, or read
her previous guest posts. (Pictured above: Window Dressing on Royal Street in
New Orleans)








When I first read Mary
Karr's memoir, The
Liars' Club , her story ignited my nerve endings because her life mirrored
mine in so many ways. We were both born in '55, had crazy childhoods in the Lone Star
State, and grew up in a wildly shu...

New Tools: Create a Book From Your Site or Blog Content

This post is part of a series, New
Tools for Entrepreneurial Writers, which overviews specific tools ripe with
opportunity for creative & entrepreneurial writers. The only limit is your imagination!
(If you're the creator of a new software or online tool & would like it featured, contact
me.)





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Anthologize is a free software that was just released as part of a nonprofit initiative
called One Week | One Tool. It's very, very
new—it hasn't even reached 1.0 stage yet. But it's worth e...

Super-Powered Book Proposals Secret #2: Numbers Always Need Meaning & Context

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This post is part of a series I'm writing on how to super-power
your nonfiction book proposal. For the majority of nonfiction book ideas (except possibly
memoir), you should prepare a book proposal first, rather than write the manuscript. To
find out if you should write a book proposal, click here.








Secret #2: Numbers Always Need Meaning & Context


You'll often hear advice on how to attach numbers to everything in your book proposal,
especially for market, platform and promotion...

Self-Publishing & Online Publishing Will Not Ruin Your Chances at a Traditional Deal

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I'm myth-busting today!

If you self-publish your work—online or in print—you
are NOT killing your chances of a traditional deal later.

I don't care if you uploaded it to Kindle
DTP, Scribd, Smashwords,
plus your own site. I don't care if you made it a mobile
app. I don't care if you podcasted the whole
thing. I don't care if you made it free, or if you charged, or what you charged.



What I do care about is how well you did it, and what happened as a result.



Did you gain...

Free Download: 101 Best Websites for Writers (+ Free Webinar!)

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A quick update this week on the newest and best stuff at Writer's Digest!



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Free PDF download of 101 Best Websites for Writers


If you don't have the May/June
2010 issue of Writer's Digest magazine, that means you missed our 101 Best Websites
article!




I
blogged about my favorite picks here.




If you sign up for our free weekly editorial e-newsletter (just requires e-mail address),
you can get a PDF of this popular feature for free. Click
here to sign up!











Free webinar on...

How Book Club Readers (and Bookstores) Can Drive Success

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Today I have the pleasure of sharing a Q&A with author Meg
Waite Clayton. Meg is the author of the national bestseller The
Wednesday Sisters, which has been popular with book clubs across the country.
I was curious about this aspect of her book's success, as well as how she came to
writing and publishing from a career in law.




--



As your bio states, you didn't start out being a novelist.
You took a detour into corporate law first. How has that experience helped you (if
at all...

The Bane of Most Writers' Lives: Waiting

The new Glimmer Train bulletin is available, and in it you'll find a lovely piece by Olufunke Grace Bankole, called "Going Solo." Here's a small snippet:

There is a time, a season for each thing:
a time to act, and a time to wait. When I forget this, I struggle to make progress
with work that requires not force, but patient, gradual persistence. In this waiting
season, it is as if nothing at all is happening, and it can feel as if the things
that are, discourage us from continuing on. The...

Best Tweets for Writers (week ending 7/30/10)

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I watch Twitter, so you don't have to. Visit each Sunday for the week's best Tweets.
If I missed a great Tweet, leave it in the Comments. Want to know about the best stuff
I read each week? Click
here to subscribe to my shared items.




Quick plug for upcoming Writer's
Digest online classes:




3
Essential Paths to Self-Publishing: where I teach you 3 frameworks for approaching
self-publishing (including e-publishing at no cost to you), with plenty of time for...