Letters and Comments for 08/10/17

Letters and Comments for 08/10/17

COMMENTS FOR:

“Should I hire a ghostwriter…or do the writing myself?”

A lot of people want to write a book simply to leave their mark somewhere. To the people out there, who have enough commitment to make it through even the roughest draft, I say – go for it! Do the best job you can up front – now get help editing it – and finally, publish it promptly. It’s your story and only you can tell it like it is. You’ll have a whole lot of personal satisfaction in doing it, even if it only sells a dozen copies.

– Wendy Jones
Highlander Imagine – Beyond Infinity
Duncan MacLeod must fight a South American Immortal at Teotihuacan.


Regarding the ghostwriter question, years ago a man contacted me asking if I would ghost his story. Intrigued I met with him only to find what he really wanted was for me to splice together his life story he’d written that filled an entire three-drawer filing cabinet. I got out of there as politely as I could because he didn’t want a writer, he wanted a secretary with a huge role of tape!

– Sarah Bates


 

 

COMMENTS FOR:

World’s Worst Query Letters and Book Proposals For August, 2017!

 

Insightful as always and funny, I too get frustrated with text abbreviations from my colleagues.

– Damien Black
Life of a Bastard
Javier Soto’s real life journey of life in foster care during the 70’s and 80’s.


Angela,
Having read several of these ‘Worse Query’ installments, I have come to the conclusion that you have a flood of foreigners responding to WritersWeekly.com
No one could possible write an inquiry that is as bad as the ones I have been reading and be a native-speaking American. You must actually get some well-written queries once in a blue moon–don’t you?

– Wendy Jones
Highlander Imagine – Beyond Infinity
Duncan MacLeod must fight a South American Immortal at Teotihuacan.

 

In reply to Wendy Jones.

Sure, we get lots of normal queries. But even some of the well-written ones ask to write on topics we don’t cover in WritersWeekly. These are just the absolute worst ones that jump up at us and yell “BOO!”

– Brian Whiddon – Managing Editor, WritersWeekly.com

 


What is a “wholesome political scenario?” Wholesome and politics, isn’t that like oil and water?

– Pamela Allegretto
Bridge of Sighs and Dreams
Nazi-occupied Rome sets the stage for Bridge of Sighs and Dreams, where the lives of two women collide in an arena of deception, greed, and sacrifice.


 

One Response to "Letters and Comments for 08/10/17"

  1. Wendy Jones  August 10, 2017 at 10:16 pm

    I have a reply for Sarah Bates who commented under ‘Ghostwriter’.

    I wouldn’t consider your description of this project as negative. If your individual was willing to pay a weekly fee (upfront), you could have sent him to me, and I would have invested in a monster-roll of tape.

    Once the project is going, it is amazing how clear it can become, to even the most ‘organizationally challenged’ individual, that each life-section or ‘bubble’ needed some ‘massaging’ (rewriting and connecting text). Here is where things can get interesting and in some cases, historically significant.

    I don’t find it the least bit surprising that someone would initially approach writing their life story that way — section by individual section. I have dealt with people who do this a lot and have observed that many people think in ‘bubbles’ or ‘scenes’. When that bubble/scene is finished, life stops (they don’t write a logical connector) until the next thing they identify as significant happens — up comes a new ‘bubble’ and away we go again.

    In the future, Sarah — please recommend all these good folks to me. We’ll get along just fine.