It’s time to put the final tweaks and edits on my book manuscript so that my editor can send it off to be formatted – and published. It’s been years since I started work on “Wrestling with God.” I’ve written draft after draft and tried format after format. I’ve been wrestling with that manuscript and what I want this book to be as fiercely as I’ve been wrestling with God and who that might be. Read more.
writing tips
Tulips and Sex — Writing as If Everyone I Know Were Dead
I want to write about tulips today. I don’t want to write about sex. The trouble is, for me, writing about tulips means writing about sex: something about their juicy curves brings erotic metaphors to my particular mind. I had thought that once my mother — and father — were no longer alive and reading over my shoulder, I’d be able to write my heart out, but . . . Read more.
You’ve Got the Agent, You’ve Got the Publisher — But Do You Have the Publicist?
You get an idea for a book. You like it a lot. You think people are going to want to read this book. You’re stoked. Then you fret for months and years over how to transform this idea you like so much into a 250-page manuscript that people will actually read. Read more.
Yippee! I Did It — I Finished My Book
At 6:02 p.m. yesterday evening I hit the send button and sent the manuscript for Wrestling With God off to my publisher, Patheos Press. To tell you the truth, I’m very proud of this book. Read more.
Making Friends — Trying To — With the Dread Serial Comma
My book contract says that I’m to deliver my book manuscript “in conformity with the provisions in ‘The Chicago Manual of Style.’” That means that, at long last, I’m finally going head-to-head with the serial comma. Read more.
Armistead Maupin: The Man Who Wrote the Quintessential San Francisco Novel — On a Newspaper Deadline
Army’s assignment was to show up at the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle every weekday morning and produce seven hundred words, give or take. The challenging part was this: Unlike most newspaper journalists, Army did not sit down to his Selectric typewriter fortified with a fat notebook of stats and quotes. Army’s job was not to report the news. It was to make it up. Read more.
Gary Kamiya — A Fun Guy Sings a Love Song to San Francisco
Due to a common writing misstep, Gary Kamiya, a highly experienced writer and editor, found himself with only six months to write a 385-page book. The San Francisco author and co-founder of Salon.com described his predicament recently to a gathering of writers at Book Passage, Marin county’s powerhouse independent bookstore. Read more.