I’ve attended several workshops where the first page or pages of attendees’ work was read out loud by an editor or agent.  Sometimes the editor or agent evaluates the work, other times we’ve focused on the reactions of the other attendees.  Every method has been a teaching moment–for me.

I attended my first workshop like this years ago with ten other writers.   The agent read the first few pages (as few as three and as many as fifteen) of each person’s work out loud.

As the agent read my manuscript out loud, I “got” to watch the reactions of the others in the room.  Lucky me.  I was able to see the exact point where they lost interest.  Painful, but a good experience.

More recently I attended Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel Workshop. Maass read each person’s first line out loud, and the attendees raised their hands if they wanted to hear more.  If there were a fair number of hands up, he read another.  At the end of some first lines, there were no hands in the air.  Again, painful for some, but a great learning tool.  (By the way, Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook is great.  Many of the exercises we did at the workshop are in the book.)

Then I saw this blog post on the Guide to Literary Agents and it reminded me of my experiences.  As I read the blog entry, I felt for those whose work was quickly rejected, but I know they learned a lot from the experience–if they could get past the mortification.

I hope they did.  There’s nothing like public humiliation to help you learn something.

The Guide to Literary Agents has interviewed Holly Root at the Waxman Agency.  Among other things, she’s interested in YA.

Read the interview here:  Interview with Holly Root.

The Waxman Agency website

Here’s a summer program for young writers.    The first session is for students entering grades 9-12.  Second session for committed high school students entering 10th grade or above.

Workshops include songwriting, screenplay & playwriting, creative nonfiction, poetry, and fiction.

UVA Young Writers Workshop

The Literacy For Hope Project

If you attend NJ SCBWI events, you might know Nanci Turner Steveson, who attends many of the events.  She’s started a literacy project to provide books for the homeless.

During this holiday season, you might consider how you can help.

Literacy for Hope

Guide to Literary Agents has an interview with Adriann Ranta, an agent at Wolf Literary Services.  She’s looking for MG and YA.

She is looking for: fiction and limited nonfiction, with an emphasis on children’s, middle grade, and young adult books. She is most interested in realistic, true-to-life stories with conflicts based in the real world. She likes edgy, dark, challenging voices, unique settings, and everyman stories told with a new spin. She does not want academic nonfiction, self-help, spiritualism, religion, or sci-fi.

Read the interview here.

Milkweed Editions is one of the nation’s leading independent, non-profit publishers.

From their website:

Milkweed Editions publishes with the intention of making a humane impact on society, in the belief that literature is a transformative art uniquely able to convey the essential experiences of the human heart and spirit. To that end, Milkweed publishes distinctive voices of literary merit in handsomely designed, visually dynamic books, exploring the ethical, cultural, and esthetic issues that free societies need continually to address.

In addition to literary nonfiction, fiction for adults and poetry, Milkweed also publishes novels for young readers between the ages of 8 and 13.  They’ve recently started taking electronic submissions and offers an award that all submissions are considered for.

Submission information is available at Milkweed Editions.

Did you see this in Publisher’s Lunch?

Amazon Breakthrough Contest Adds YA Category, Reduces Advances

For the third year, Penguin Group is joining Amazon in their Breakthrough Novel Award contest–which will now add a second prize for young adult fiction. The contest, which starts January 25, will also now be open to novels that have been previously self-published (to not penalize all those existing CreateSpace customers). Alas in a less heralded change the promised advance to the winners has gotten smaller: originally promising a $25,000 advance, this new contest’s two winners are assured $15,000 advances each. (Sales of the three contest-related books published so far by Penguin imprints–Bill Loehfelm’s FRESH KILLS; BAD THINGS HAPPEN by Harry Dolan; and THE WET NURSE’S TALE by Erica Eisdorfer; have been quite modest to date.

They will accept up to 5,000 entries each in the fiction and young adult categories. The “professional” judges evaluating the three finalists (selected by Penguin editors) are author Tana French, agent Julie Barer, and editor Molly Stern for general fiction, and authors Sarah Dessen and Nancy Werlin, agent Amy Berkower, and publisher Ben Schrank for young adult.

Information is available at Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Jenny Rappaport has announced she’s closing The Rappaport Agency.

See the details here.

Did you see this interview with Tina Wexler of ICM on Alice’s CWIM Blog?

Tina Wexler is a literary agent at International Creative Management(ICM), a full-service agency and home to Dr. Seuss and E.B. White. Her list includes fiction and nonfiction for children and adults, with a focus on middle grade and YA.

Recent and forthcoming titles represented by Tina include Donna Gephart’s As If Being 12 3/4 Isn’t Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running For President (winner of SCBWI’s 2009 Sid Fleischman Humor Award), Sara Lewis Holmes’ Operation Yes (Arthur A. Levine Books), Mara Purnhagen’s Tagged (Harlequin Teen), Laurel Snyder’s Baxter, The Pig Who Wanted To Be Kosher(Tricycle), and Sanjay Patel’s Ramayana (Chronicle).

Read the rest of the interview here:  Tina Wexler

Rue, the word, means to bitterly regret.

RUE, the acronym, means “resist the urge to explain.”

Writers often over-explain, especially in the first draft.  We often show the reader something, then we tell them.  We want to be sure they understand what we’re trying to say.

But we should trust our reader and RUE.  A good rule of thumb is to say it once and say it well.

Over-explanation sentences often occur at the end of a paragraph or in a separate paragraph, and they often contain plenty of pronouns or vague nouns, such as ’she,’ ‘he,’ ‘they,’ ‘them,’ ‘it,’ ‘that,’ ‘those,’ and ‘these.’  These words can act as a flag that you’re repeating yourself.