Author | Joseph L. Selby

Tag: rejection

  • How to Kill Productivity

    How to Kill Productivity in Five Easy Steps Review your Twitter as you do often during the day. Reply to an agent who you follow when she asks for feedback on whether saying “it was a close call but no thank you” was cruel or encouraging. Suggest that it would be crushing at first, but…

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  • Reject’d

    I was kind of down on the way home today. Thinking about my (very few) experiences with my father. Specifically, when they took me to the hospital to see him right before he died. I was three years old and he was in the ICU. Children aren’t allowed there because they’re petri dishes of germs.…

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  • Humility Has Its Limits

    My routine on a writing week and a reading week are pretty similar. Spend an hour on the commuter rail either reading or writing. Spend 20 minutes on the subway reading. (Writing on the subway is very difficult, and I do it very infrequently). While I have a number of samples and one novel on…

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  • Clipping

    Next time you’re listening to an audio medium (such as the radio or a podcast), listen to how the person speaks rather than just what they’re saying. Much like “he said” as a dialogue signifier, there are certain sounds that go along with actual words that our brain just ignores. The inhalation at the beginning…

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  • Stuff Stolen from Other People

    Eric at Pimp My Novel retweeted this blog post that has a great quote: “An absolutely necessary part of a writer’s equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts on himself.” – Irwin Shaw I’ll try to…

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  • Pay Attention, Stupid

    Google Home Page has been increasingly deficient in updating modules with new blog posts. I follow a collection of industry people who post daily and lately, some of their posts haven’t been showing up until days later. That was another impetus for me to switch from LJ to Blogger. The Blogger Dashboard is much more…

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  • The Hard Part

    I got a pass on WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING today. This particular agent has looked at BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE as well and is very good about giving feedback with rejections. What struck me today is that his comment was very similar to a comment Elizabeth Poole gave me when she beta-read the…

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  • Query Doldrums

    I’ve pretty much known what was wrong with THE TRIAD SOCIETY since I finished the first draft of the manuscript. It’s taken all this time to articulate what’s wrong with it, but there is a reason I did not launch immediately back into revision. There was something seriously wrong. I knew it. And I needed…

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  • In which I post a second time about semi- and/or unrelated topics

    My wife went to Philadelphia this summer to see a men’s regional Barbershop competition. (My wife is a competitive Barbershopper.) While there, she bought me some barbecue chicken seasoning. The odor was pretty strong and I was unsure if I would like it. DEAR LORD THIS STUFF IS GOOD! I only bring that up because…

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  • Querying is Scary Shit

    I like writing fast. I like producing a lot of stories in a short amount of time. I have a lot of stories crammed into this brain, and I’m starting later than I should have in my life (whole different therapy session about why that is). Regardless, I have somewhere between 10 and 30 years…

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