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Category Archives: career
To Eligibility Post or Not to Eligibility Post?
Let us begin by acknowledging that this is a rancorous period, full of clashing agendas, bewildered onlookers, and all too many innocents caught in the crossfire. And that right now making an eligibility post particularly mentioning Hugo Award categories like Related Work is something that some of us are circling and wondering about.
And my answer is yes. Yes, you should. Why?
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Posted in career
Tagged award eligibility posts, awards, hugo awards, nebula awards, purplesf, self-deprecation and writers
75 Comments
Changes to My Newsletter
I’ve made some changes to my monthly newsletter about my online classes, most importantly that it’s going to a more frequent mailing rate but I’m also adding some cool stuff to compensate.
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The Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated Awards Process
Hugo nominations have opened and with that, an array of canvassing and promotion techniques have begun to be deployed, which will no doubt continue until the actual awards are awarded and everyone can briefly calm down before a new season begins.
The thing I’m not fond of, which has arisen in recent years, is the idea that one should vote according to one’s politics, and plunk down a vote for the “right” books without bothering to read them. Continue reading
Let’s Retain ALL the Rights!
One of the questions being raised repeatedly on a discussion board I participate on is the question of electronic rights. Should a magazine be able to buy a story and display it on their website in perpetuity without additional payment? Does it make a different whether or not it’s behind a paywall? If there’s no additional payment, when should rights revert? What happens with something like an anthology that is in electronic form and hence won’t go out of print the way a hard-copy edition does?
I’m presuming that most people reading this know that normally when you “sell” a story to a publication, what they’re actually buying is the right to publish it in a particular form. You, the author, retain any rights not spelled out in the contract. You can (and I encourage you to) sell the story again as a reprint, and you may want to look at forms like audio or in another language.
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On Awards: To Be Pushy Or Not To Be Pushy
Amal El-Mohtar has a great blog post up right now about writers and posts where they list what’s eligible for awards. I get as squicky about writing my own as anyone else, I’ve got to admit, and I thought this was a terrific reminder that it’s okay to toot your own horn a bit.
So in that light, if you’re reading for the Hugo, Locus, Nebula, Tiptree, or World Fantasy Award, here you go.
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Do Writers Need to Blog? No.
I keep reading articles that say blogging is mandatory for writers nowadays. That agents and editors won’t take you on if you don’t already have a platform. This is hooey.
Let me repeat that. Hooey.
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Self Promotion and Career Building: What I Told the Clarion West 2013 Class
Yesterday I spent a pleasant chunk of time talking to the Clarion West 2013 students, along with Django Wexler. Django and I were the “mystery muses,” a Friday feature for the CW students where people come in to chat about a specific aspect of the writerly life. Django spoke well to the experience of having one’s first major book come out, since his book (which I have read and heartily recommend) The Thousand Names just came out. He let us all know (to mass disappointment) that it doesn’t lead to being booked on the Leno or Daily Show or lavish book tours, though he did get to go to ComicCon.
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