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Showing posts from March, 2008

Boring Book Flaps - Some Notes on Originality

By Chris Stewart It seems every time I read someone's bio for whatever reason they are working on a novel. Everyone and their brother, mother, ex-boyfriend, homeopath, babysitter, work crush, realtor, and massage therapist are writers. It's enough to make you give up and go to law school. We all like to think we have original ideas that will catch an agent's or editor's attention, but do we really? (And how much originality is a good thing? Too much and you're not marketable. Not enough and your ms ends up in the trash. Perhaps that's a subject for another post....) To find out where you fit in, I encourage you to take a field trip to your local bookstore or library and check out the offerings in your genre. This is also a good exercise for those of you out there working on pitches for agents and editors for an upcoming conference (or to use in your query letters). Make sure you bring change for the copier (if you go to the library). You're going to copy som