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	<title>Sin and Syntax</title>
	<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com</link>
	<description>An online salon for those who love wicked good prose.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:01:43 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Jill Kneerim on How to Find an Agent</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Literary agent Jill Kneerim put together an eight-point checklist for prospective authors looking for an agent. Point Number 1: If you have more than one idea or book you are working on, pick ONE of them to lead off with, and don't mention the others for a while. (The woods are full of amateurs who have drawers full of unpublished manuscripts.).


Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/constance-hale-on-demystifying-books/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Demystifying Books'>Demystifying Books</a></li>
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		<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com/sin-and-syntax-salon/how-to-find-an-agent/</link>
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		<title>Demystifying Books</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last Friday I hosted a gathering of two editors, four agents, and about 30 midcareer writers at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. The session set out to demystify book publishing and was intended to help journalists understand what role books might play in our careers.

The speakers came from small and large agencies, and small and large publishers, in Boston and New York. Here’s a random sampling of ideas that surfaced...


Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.sinandsyntax.com/sin-and-syntax-salon/how-to-find-an-agent/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Jill Kneerim on How to Find an Agent'>Jill Kneerim on How to Find an Agent</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/e-books-twit-wit-and-susan-orlean/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: E-books, twit wit, and Susan Orlean'>E-books, twit wit, and Susan Orlean</a></li>
</ol>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/constance-hale-on-demystifying-books/</link>
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		<title>Constance Hale on Bucks and Book Publishing</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If you’re thinking about writing books, it’s helpful to know some of the basics about how much money to expect, how advances work, and when—if ever—you’ll collect royalties. There’s much confusion out there, especially since all we generally read in the press is that Sarah Palin got $5 million for her book, Barack Obama $500,000 for his.

I did some quick research, added to it what I know from my own experiences both as an author and editor, and then ran this summary by a few agents and editors to make sure it’s sound.



Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.sinandsyntax.com/sin-and-syntax-salon/total-risk-freedom-discipline/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Constance Hale on Risk, Freedom, Discipline'>Constance Hale on Risk, Freedom, Discipline</a></li>
</ol>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com/sin-and-syntax-salon/on-bucks-and-books/</link>
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		<title>Unblocking writers block</title>
		<description><![CDATA[“Do you believe in writer’s block?” asked a journalist friend recently at dinner. Her tone made me think she was one of the lucky ones—writers who never hesitate, never doubt themselves, never contemplate scrapping it all and going to law school.

I soon learned that she is no more immune than the rest of us from the ins and outs of starting and stopping, trying and failing, hoping and despairing. She was just curious about my opinion.

Of course I offered it.


Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/the-answer-to-writers-block-big-courage/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: The answer to writers block: big courage'>The answer to writers block: big courage</a></li>
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		<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/unblocking-writers-block/</link>
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		<title>The answer to writers block: big courage</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In my last post, I wrote about seeing a performance of Mozart Dances by the Mark Morris Dance Group. A few days before that performance at the Boston Opera, I listened in on a conversation between Morris and Richard Dyer, a former music critic, which took place at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. I reported on that conversation with a group of Tweeting journalists #markmorris.

My ears perked up when a dance teacher asked the choreographer whether he ever feared being blocked, and what he did when he “dried up.” Morris described being creatively blocked as a kind of occupational hazard and offered some useful advice to any writer who suffers from occasional writer's block.



Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/unblocking-writers-block/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Unblocking writers block'>Unblocking writers block</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/mozart-morris-and-strange-metaphors/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Mozart, Morris, and strange metaphors'>Mozart, Morris, and strange metaphors</a></li>
</ol>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/the-answer-to-writers-block-big-courage/</link>
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		<title>Sarah Baker on the Art of Writing Free</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Nearly every writing book on my shelf suggests the same somewhat mysterious daily practice. It has many names: “morning pages” in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way; “first thoughts” in Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones; and “early morning writing” in Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. Peter Elbow, author of Writing Without Teachers, prefers the somewhat ungainly but increasingly popular “freewriting.”

I find that freewriting is a useful channel for my ever-churning, over-active brain. It’s efficient therapy—cheap and fast.


No related posts.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com/sin-and-syntax-salon/sarah-baker-on-the-art-of-writing-free/</link>
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		<title>Mozart, Morris, and strange metaphors</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Let me tell you about something I saw last night. Eighteen men and women, all lightly dressed in summer white, lay on a proscenium stage. From the floor, 36 naked hands bent at right angles from 36 wrists and wriggled up, each at a slightly different pace. Let me make sure you’ve got the picture: 36 splayed palms with urgently curled fingertips, turning clockwise and counterclockwise, clockwise and counterclockwise—as if working the lids of enormous and invisible upside-down jars—and at the same time lifting slowly, pushed upwards by long, lithe, tendril-like arms.

What did any of this have to do with writing?





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</ol>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/mozart-morris-and-strange-metaphors/</link>
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		<title>Seeing green</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Sitting in the cab of a pickup, waiting to drive up the coast of O‘ahu, I find myself watching a butterfly four feet in front of the windshield. My focus sharpens. The butterfly’s wings are like the iced feuilles of a French pastry—terribly thin slices of tangerine, edged in mocha. They raise and lower, raise and lower, forming two erect parallel planes, then two flat spans. The insect swoops and twitches.... I have been looking at this amazing bush of purple, green, and orange every day for a week. But I haven’t seen it.

If the tropics pry open the senses, they humble the writer. It’s one thing to discover the powers of perception, quite another to find powers of description. It can take days for my muscles to let go, longer for my senses to open, and even longer to connect words to images.





No related posts.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/seeing-green/</link>
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		<title>E-books, twit wit, and Susan Orlean</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Didja catch two fascinating articles in last Sunday’s New York Times? In the Op-Ed pages, Farrar, Straus &#038; Giroux publisher Jonathan Galassi writes about the heroic—and hidden—work behind great literature, and about the myopia of those infatuated with the idea of e-books.

David Carr, in “Why Twitter Will Endure,” confesses his own infatuation with Twitter.

In Talking Story, Shelly Runyon writes about the Twitter feed of Susan Orlean, and what it tells us about Orlean’s particular brand of short-burst communication. 
 


Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.sinandsyntax.com/talking-story/shelly-runyon-on-twit-wit-and-chick-lit/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Shelly Runyon on Twit Wit and Chick Lit'>Shelly Runyon on Twit Wit and Chick Lit</a></li>
<li><a href='http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/constance-hale-on-demystifying-books/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Demystifying Books'>Demystifying Books</a></li>
</ol>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/e-books-twit-wit-and-susan-orlean/</link>
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		<title>Shelly Runyon on Twit Wit and Chick Lit</title>
		<description><![CDATA[susanorlean BTW, my animal sitter at home reports that Laura has become a total raging maniac rooster madman, complete with rooster rage. Oy. – November 11, 2009

In a grassy upstate-New York yard fit for farming, Susan Orleans gives a camera crew for The New Yorker a tour of her utility shed. Half of the shed is occupied by seven chickens. Outside the shed is a fenced-in area, resembling a petting zoo. Chickens zoom past the cameras as Orleans squats down just inside the yard. Three birds rush over to snack on the tomato half in their dutiful owner’s hands.

Almost every day, Orleans writes one-liners just like that about her chickens on Twitter. It started with her just tweeting her life, discussing her family and career. Then something clicked. Her fans fixated on the birds. They followed her chicken tweets, re-tweeted them to friends, and tweeted her back. It became a chicken-tweet movement, inquiries about chickens flying fast at Orlean. All the while her following proliferated...


Related posts:<ol><li><a href='http://www.sinandsyntax.com/blog/e-books-twit-wit-and-susan-orlean/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: E-books, twit wit, and Susan Orlean'>E-books, twit wit, and Susan Orlean</a></li>
</ol>]]></description>
		<link>http://www.sinandsyntax.com/talking-story/shelly-runyon-on-twit-wit-and-chick-lit/</link>
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