What To Do When the Power Goes Out OR How I organized my writing life By Annalisa Parent www.annalisaparent.com I was in the middle of revising the first three chapters of my first novel for the agent pitch session this weekend –scratch that: tomorrow!– when my computer died. Just shut off! Mid-sentence. Panic! Fortunately I am … [Read more…]
By Annalisa Parent www.annalisaparent.com “On writing” books are a dime a dozen, but the good ones are far and few between. To continue my use of worn-out phrases, Skip Press‘ How to Write What You Want and Sell What You Write is the exception to the rule and anything but cliche. Originally published in 1995 and … [Read more…]
By Annalisa Parent www.annalisaparent.com Writers’ conferences are wonderful opportunities to remember that, as writers, though we write alone, we are not alone. Last evening I was treated, without hyperbole, to the most beautiful author talk I have ever had the honor to experience. Terry Tempest Williams is one of the most genuine and present people I … [Read more…]
By Annalisa Parent www.annalisaparent.com The rules of writing are nothing like the rules of real life. In real life we censor ourselves, leave out the gory or embarrassing or overly personal details of the stories we tell about our daily lives. In writing, we have to be so brutally honest about the human emotional reality … [Read more…]
See my thoughts on organic hits on facebook pages from a recent interview with lonelybrand.com. (Read the full article here.) What tips do you have for promoting your work?
By Annalisa Parent www.annalisaparent.com In one of my writing lives, I write sassy columns about dating life. Today I’m here to sass about grammar. Every writer has her pet projects, her grammar or syntax particularities, and her pet peeves. For example, one of mine is agreement. How many of you would have written “Every writer has … [Read more…]
By Annalisa Parent www.annalisaparent.com In one of the chapters of my life, I lived in Paris. My French boyfriend, like most twenty-year-old men, was an aspiring rock musician. I recall one day working with him on song writing; I was encouraging him to write the music to sound like the feeling of the lyrics he’d written. … [Read more…]
by Annalisa Parent www.annalisaparent.com I haven’t been in the writing business long—and what I mean is the actual business. Sure, I’ve been writing for a long time, but my marketing platform is a fledgling one-month-old. A month has been just adequate time to discover how much many writers detest creating their marketing platforms. I will concede … [Read more…]
I teach a memoir class once a week in a continuing education program. Each week I give the participants a prompt. Oftentimes they will bring back what they’ve written over the week in response to the prompt. Some are better than others; here is one that yielded a lot of good writing and discussion. Where … [Read more…]
Unslumping yourself by just daring to write something Some days I feel inspirationless—or worse, I feel discouraged—that my writing isn’t good enough, or I haven’t got anything to say, or that no one wants to read what I write. And, well, that feels awful. But I’ve found that the way through it is writing. It’s … [Read more…]
Ok, full confession time. There’s only so long I can sit with my butt attached to that chair writing. So every 15 minutes or so, I give myself a dance break. I put on one song, loud!, and dance like a fool around my office. Wow, that’s embarrassing! Umm, yeah, that is me in the photo! … [Read more…]
One of the great things about living in a digital world is the ability to communicate with a wide variety of people. I had the great honor of a recent online conversation with Alexander McCall Smith author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, The Sunday Philosophy Club, and the 44 Scotland Street series. He is … [Read more…]
Writers hate a lot of –tion words–particularly procrastination and distraction. Procrastination isn’t my worst enemy; well, at least not as formidable a foe as distraction. Distraction is a shape-shifter: it takes many forms. Mostly, it takes the form of something that ends with .com, and is accompanied by its favorite –tion travel pal: justification. Chapter … [Read more…]
My goal for this year has been to finish all of the half-finished books on my nightstand before I start any new ones. It’s not that they’re horrible books and I’ve entirely lost interest (though I do feel guilty, for unexplained reasons, for not finishing a book—it feels like a failure or an unfinished project). … [Read more…]
I’ve been working on getting my writing out there in front of the right people for a while. Today I got the email every author dreams of: “I’d absolutely love to have you write an article for our site , exposing our customers and readers to you and your brand.” Of course, I am going … [Read more…]
In my other (non-writing) life, I am a photographer. In the early years of my training, a wise, experienced photographer said “The key to my success is taking lots of pictures, because you generally throw away at least half,” or something like that. And it is true, in photography, that photos are rejected because someone … [Read more…]
William Carlos Williams is one of my favorite poets. I appreciate his ability to convey sophisticated ideas in so few words. Here is a poem I wrote for fun, modeled after Williams’ “This is Just to Say.” I wrote this after a month-long research trip in France, where the food was decadent and delicious, and … [Read more…]
Sometimes the muse strikes at the oddest times, like when I’m packing my lunch. And, so, an entire chapter gets jotted down in short hand on post-it notes at the kitchen table. Such is the writer’s life. 🙂