10 Tips to Building Relationships What do relationships have to do with writing? Plenty. In your writing career you will have relationships with other writers, book editors, magazine editors, agents, booksellers and a bunch more. What all these entities have in common is that they’re people, and as such they have finely-tuned social skills, emotional reactions, and cultural reflexes. They respond immediately and strongly to other people, even when they look like they aren’t p

Think of all the things a piece of fiction must have. Who can ever get it all right? For example, we’re told to excel at plot, character, setting, point of view, dialog, backstory, conflict, pacing, and style. If it’s science fiction, add cool science ideas and scope. This list is long and demanding. The good news is that a novel doesn’t have to have everything right. Remember Randall Jarrell’s wonderful line: “A novel is a narrative of a certain length with something wrong w

Here is my list of things I wish no one would ever say to me again. What’s on your list? * When are they going to make a movie out of your book? Is this a person’s way of saying that a book isn’t good enough, that it has to be a movie? Or do they mean, I can’t be bothered reading, but I’d watch a movie of your story, maybe. Or do they know that only wildly successful writers sell movie rights, and they are so hoping you’ll be one of those? (In which case, they are actually re

I’m always surprised at the similarities reviewers see between my stories and those of other writers. For myself, I have such a blind spot about that. Maybe the author is the last one you should ask. Here’s the comparison that Library Journal made in last week’s review of Bright of the Sky: “Reminiscent of the groundbreaking novels of Philip K. Dick, Philip Jose Farmer, and Dan Simmons, her latest volume belongs in most libraries.” I had a Publishers Weekly review for Tropic