A blog about books, the publishing world, and maintaining ultimate litness.
Happy International Artist Day! I’ve never lived anywhere with a prolific art scene, so I took advantage of Denver’s while I was visiting, and went to the Sante Fe Art District. I went on a Friday, which turned out to be a decent day to visit, since a lot of the galleries and studios are […]
The other day, I was watching The Thomas Crown Affair, and in a museum scene, I glimpsed a familiar statue in the corner of the screen. I realized that I had been given a bronze cast of the same statue a long time ago, and after a little research, I found out it was Edgar […]
I’m sure I have a kindred spirit or two who story craft while listening to music. The interplay of instrumentals, melody, and poetry is a rambunctious inciter when it comes to creativity. Recently, I had plots unroll in my head entirely because of lyrics and a specific sequence of songs. I thought I’d make this […]
For the longest time, I’ve dreaded the inevitable poetry unit in classes. Since that was my only exposure to poetry, I suppose I’ve dreaded reading poetry in general. But over the past two years, poetry has started to creep into my life to the point where I’m reading and writing it almost daily. Despite this […]
Over the past decade or two, people have made a lot of progress in de-stigmatizing poor mental health, but it’s had the unfortunate consequence of sensationalizing mental illness, particularly depression. Now, depression is often portrayed as tragically beautiful, as a personality trait, or even as trendy. This can lead people to think that they need […]
When I read queries during my internship at the literary agency, I would often reject an author after the first sentence of the manuscript. That might sound harsh, but I learned that when I continued reading, my first instinct was nearly always right. If you’ve read my post “A Literary Agency: An Intern’s Perspective,” you […]
In the summer of 2019, I was fortunate enough to intern remotely at a literary agency. Just to give you a sense of what it entailed, the bulk of my time was spent reading queries, evaluating partial and full manuscripts, writing reader reports, and maintaining publishing contacts. I also wrote a few editorial letters […]