Announcing #AuthorLifeMonth 2020!

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#AuthorLifeMonth

#AuthorLifeMonth is back! Whether you’ve been following along since its inception in 2016 or it’s brand-new to you, the same rules still apply:

1. Post whenever you want and skip whatever you want.
2. Miss a day? Either post both the next day or just skip the day entirely!
3. Don’t have Instagram? Doesn’t matter! Post on Twitter, Facebook, or any other social medium that uses a hashtag.

To answer the #1 question every year, yes, this is open to unpublished authors; just interpret the questions in a way that works for you, e.g. for “Acknowledgments,” you can shares ones you’ve loved from another book or share something about people who’d definitely be in yours.

As every year, the challenge itself begins February 1st. I think that covers it all, so without further ado, here’s the prompt!

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Perpetual WIPs Returns: Mid-Career Authors

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Literary Agents, Publishing, querying

Welcome back to my not-so-daily blog, and to my favorite series within it, Perpetual WIPs! For those unfamiliar, Perpetual WIPs is a blog series I started back in 2012 (which I guess makes it officially ancient?) that asks the same questions of a series of publishing professionals in a specific category and posts the answers anonymously in an effort to help authors navigate this beautifully and brutally complex industry we call publishing. You can read more about it here, but now I’m gonna move on to the The Point: a new edition launches today, and it’s all about authors who are making agent jumps in the middle of their careers.

You may notice that discussing mid-career querying is kind of a passion of mine, partly because it’s very rarely talked about and partly because I find it really interesting how much our needs change as our careers go on, and what kind of industry changes we see reflected in that as well. If you take away nothing else, though, it should be this: changing agents is a perfectly normal part of the process, and while it isn’t something every author does, it sure is something a lot of authors do! And it isn’t always a reflection on the agent or even indicative of a bad relationship or any bad actors; as you’ll see, there are many reasons authors and agents part, and many ways in which careers shift. So whether you’re querying or just curious, I hope you enjoy and learn a thing or two!

Here we go!