Averil Dean's Blog, page 18

Jackets

I’m collecting jackets. Here are a few of my favorites:

What about you? Any favorites? What do you love in a book cover?

I.R.

Do you ever look at your work and think, Who will read this? I don’t mean that in marketing terms, as in who’s your readership, who will buy your book, are you selling to repressed forty-something females or men who’ve never gotten jiggy or little girls who whinge at their mothers in the bookstore. What I mean is, who exactly? And where, and how? Imagine one person, the person most likely to get you. What does (s)he look like? What’s she wearing? Where does she read, and how fast, and why? Th...

In Memoriam

The Dish

Time to fill the candy dish. It’s true that I haven’t quite put Blackbird to bed, but she’s close enough to allow a bit of multitasking, and to be honest, the new book is burning a hole in my heart. It’s almost time to start writing, and for that I need candy. Every thousand words I get a treat. I aim to pull a candy per day from the dish, though sometimes I get two and can stockpile the spares against days when the muse is on a hunger strike. I don’t sweat it. As long as I get some daily sug...

Smarty Pants

What one piece of advice do you wish someone had given you before you began writing your first novel? – From The Secret Miracle, edited by Daniel Alarcon

Rabih Alameddine: Don’t do it.

Susan Minot: Advice is pertinent only when it rings true, which means you somehow know it already. Maybe: “It always takes longer than you think it will and usually goes past the point when you are interested in it, but that doesn’t mean you can stop. Keep going.”

Andrew Sean Greer: Don’t listen to anybody; you ar...

The Painter

Does everyone have their weekend read? It’s a three-day here, and the patio table is up in our backyard with four squashy chairs to choose from and a jug of margarita mix in the fridge. Bring it.

I’ve been seeing this one everywhere: Kirkus, IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, Amazon… And I loved the author’s first book, so tomorrow I’m diving in.

What’s up next for you? How did you find it?

Canoe

I am in one of those moods in which I write a post every ten minutes, delete it and start over. Lather, rinse, repeat. Repeat repeat repeat. What happens when we get like this? When everything seems monumental and unimportant and simple in the bad way. When you wake up with a sore back and the beginnings of tears for no goddamn reason, when the coffee is weak and the dog looks at you with one rolling eye, too exhausted from sleeping to move, and your thighs are itchy, your hair’s a nest, the...

Pods

At our office, I get the mail. It’s the high point of my workday, no matter the weather, a chance to leave the bustle of the office and breathe the soft air and stretch my legs. Yesterday it was late when I went out. The sun was low and the leaves were tinged with gold, and as I locked up the mailbox and stood with my arms full of letters, a breeze stirred the branches and sent a snowfall of fluffy white seed pods floating around me, each one spinning gently, falling and rising a little and d...

Around the Block

Chuck Wendig’s post is so much better than what I had planned to write today that I think I’ll just direct you there, and then you can maybe wander back later and tell me what you think.

Writer’s block: myth or malady?

Bones

Houston, we have a story. The pieces came together in that late-night way they do sometimes, when you knock a stack of books and your only pair of glasses off the nightstand because you’re in too much of a hurry to lay hands on your notebook. Oh, the relief when you write the idea down in time, right? Just before it slithers away.

Of course I haven’t laid down a formal outline at this point. I’m not sure I want to. I do believe in having a structure in place before starting a book, at least in...