Go Read This - Blog Edition

I know many of you (if not most!) are familiar with the editor/agent/writer blogosphere, but in case you missed them, here are a few to get your brain working this fine morning.


Jessica over at Book Ends is looking for something new...


"Steampunk. Please, please send me steampunk of all sorts. Adult, young adult, romance, mystery. I personally love this genre and can’t get enough of it."




Agent Kristen at Pub Rants provides some very good advice on self-submitting to small publishing houses. 


"So, resist the temptation and if you are submitting directly, make sure you pick the best editor first time around as you really only have the one shot. And of course, good luck."




Janet Reid gives you the inside scoop on winning free registration for the Backspace Writers Conference. 




And finally, if you're in the process of developing your query or synopsis, make sure you're spending plenty of time with your Evil Editor and the Query Shark!

Another Grand Reopening - Welcome to 2011!

As those of you who are already my clients know, Murdock Editing has been on a hiatus since November 2010 due to family obligations. Thank you all for your well-wishes, thoughts, and prayers.

 I am so pleased to announce that 2011 is looking up, and I am proud to be flinging the metaphorical doors open - we're back! 

In the coming weeks I plan to have some great posts up here for you - including my favorite, Reader Questions! If you have anything you want to ask the editor, shoot me an e-mail at editor at murdockediting dot com. 

In other news, we reached our goal of $1,000 over at Fiverr - all of which was donated to charity. In 2011, I'm upping the challenge - for every $5 you donate through my Fiverr gigs (go here for more information), I'll match your donation. 

Last but not least, I've decided to continue with 2010's policy of booking no more than four months in advance, so the books are currently open for March through May. As of this morning, there are six slots available. If you want to secure a spot for summer 2011, feel free to contact me, and I'll put you on the wait list. 

Happy New Year! 

What would you do for $5? Let's raise $1,000 to buy 500 books to start home libraries for a neighborhood of low-income families through First Book!

A few weeks ago a friend pointed me to a new site: Fiverr, a site that asks, "What are you willing to do for $5?"

As many of you know, every now and then I run various fundraisers for my pet charity, First Book. So I though to myself, "Self? How can we combine the two and raise more $$$ than ever before?"

So here is what I will do for $5:

I will read your query letter and tell you if I'd request your manuscript or not, and why for $5

OR

I will read your first five pages and tell you if I'd request your manuscript or not, and why for $5

"But Lindsay!" you say. "You already provide sample edits of the first ten pages, free of charge, to prospective clients! And now you're charging for it??? And if I wanted to know if my query letter would get rejected or not, couldn't I just send it to an agent for free???"

Of course not! I'm not changing any policies here. This is NOT a sample edit. Sample edits are a free service I provide ONLY to authors who I am considering adding to my schedule or waiting list - authors who I expect to work with on full evaluations. They are far more time intensive and involved. 

What I'm offering here is simple - you send me what you'd send an agent. I, using my super-powers gained in my agency days, will do just what the agent does - tell you if I'd want to see more or not.
But here's the key difference, and the reason why you're going add $5 to the charity pot: instead of a standard rejection letter, I'm going to tell you WHY I'd reject it and *gasp* WHAT YOU CAN DO TO FIX IT!!!

"But Lindsay," you say again. "Can't I just send my query to Query Shark and my pages to Evil Editor for the same thing???"

Yes! Of course! And I highly recommend doing so! But not everyone wants their work torn apart and then posted online for all the world to see. And, again, it's for charity. Think of the children. 

"Okay," you say. "I'm in. What do I do?"

Easy! click on one of the links above. Once you get to the Fiverr website, take a quick minute to create an account, then click "Order Now!" and send me your query letter or sample pages. That's it! Your job is done! Now just sit back and wait for advice you can really use.

O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference

At the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in NYC until
Wednesday. Want the inside scoop? Follow me on twitter
@MurdockEditing.

Check in for the big news tomorrow - Google's new ebook platform (and
yes, they are taking over the world, and no, I don't mind a bit!).

--
Sent from my mobile device

Jump.

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back; always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it! Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it"

-William H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

Today's Accomplishment: Splurge

Today's accomplishment so far: spending my birthday bookstore gift certificates. (They lasted MORE THAN TWO WEEKS! CRAZINESS!)

I'm on a chick lit kick this month, so:

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff 

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything by Janelle Brown

The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen

Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg

The Beach House by Jane Green

Where should I start?!

Notes From The Evaluation Archives

Notes From The Manuscript Evaluation Archives is a new feature I'm trying out here at the Murdock Editing blog. 

Today's Edition: Backstory in Memoir


Think about your favorite contemporary novels or non-famous-person memoirs (classic literature should not be included in this thought experiment – writers and readers in days gone by could get away with all sorts of things that our modern readers will not stand for). Do you know everything there is to know about every character's history? Where they were born? What their parents were like? If it is a story with an adult protagonist, you may know a few details as they pop up in the general narrative, but you most likely don't have chapters devoted to the past.

It is very difficult to cut our own pasts out of our memoirs. You know that your past made you who you are today, and you probably have very strong opinions on how certain things affected you. And you want your reader to understand you as a person, so you feel that you have to include everything.

Don't. Like a fiction writer, you know everything there is to know about your protagonist (you). But you don't include it all. So much about a person is under the surface – we only ever see the tip of the iceberg – but if you show us the iceberg, if you really let us come up close and see the tip, we'll know that there is more below the surface. When it comes down to it, the way that your characters speak, the way they behave, the way they interact with each other and react to the events happening to them in the present of the story will mean so much more to the reader than anything you tell them about your characters' past. 

And backstory isn't just limited to telling us about the past – too much background included in a scene or "explaining" can be just as detrimental to your story. One of the great joys of reading a book is finding the connections between events, discovering the motivations of the characters, and using our own experiences and understanding of the world to understand the characters and their actions. If you constantly spell out for us why someone did something, or that this means that this will happen, or that happened because of this other thing, you lose the joy of discovery and the power of whatever is happening in the moment. You are telling the reader far too much – if you're doing this, you'll find notes such as "essaying" and "pontificating" and "over-explaining" throughout the marked MS. When you are essaying, you're telling us too much instead of letting us just live it and discover it with you. Find your moment, stay with it, and trust the reader to find his or her own connections.