Month: February 2013

Knowing A Good Novel Manuscript From A Bad One, by Phillipa Fioretti | Writing Novels in Australia

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“I entered the manuscript for The Book of Love in the 2008 Hachette/QWC Manuscript Development Program. You could submit as many manuscripts as you liked, so I also entered another.  One got through, the other didn’t. Why?

The Hachette publisher later told me that, although the characters were strong, ‘she knew what was going to happen’ in the unsuccessful manuscript. I put that manuscript away and got on with developing and publishing The Book of Love.

I recently revisited the unsuccessful manuscript and I can see a lot of problems. It reads as a string of scenes, one scene meanders on to the next with no tension building within each scene, within each chapter or within the story overall. The characters are predictable in every respect and, while this manuscript had its fans among friends and beta readers, it’s so far from being publishable it may not be worth the effort of developing it.”

READ MORE: Knowing A Good Novel Manuscript From A Bad One, by Phillipa Fioretti | Writing Novels in Australia.

Aradale Asylum

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Well, the weekend is over (I know, it’s Thursday, but I’ve included recovery time) and what a weekend it was.

I took part in a creative writing retreat with nearly twenty other people. We went to stay at Aradale, an abandoned 1800s lunatic asylum that is of a staggering size.

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We all stayed in the dining hall (it also used to double as a dance hall and a place to hold religious services, so you can imagine the size) for both nights. We had originally planned to move over to the old staff quarters for the second night, but the distance and the stairs would have made it very difficult to move all twenty of the mattresses over there. After what happened in the staff quarters on the second night, I’m glad we didn’t. More on that in a later post (it deserves it’s own post).

For more info, keep an eye on this blog, and check out the dedicated Aradale 2013 blog HERE.

Used Ebooks, the Ridiculous Idea that Could Also Destroy the Publishing Industry | Motherboard

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“Amazon has a patent to sell used ebooks. When I first scanned that headline, I thought it must be some Onion-esque gag, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone. Used e-books? As in, rumpled up, dog-eared pdfs? Faded black-and-white Kindle cover art, Calibri notes typed in the margins that you cant erase? Barely-amusing image aside, used ebooks are for real. Or at least have a very real potential to become real. See, Amazon just cleared a patent for technology that would allow it to create an online marketplace for used ebooks–essentially, if you own an ebook, you would theoretically be able to put it up for sale on a secondary market.The approved patent describes the process:”

via Used Ebooks, the Ridiculous Idea that Could Also Destroy the Publishing Industry | Motherboard.