Category: craft

Open Letter to Publisher X

Editor Y:

In today’s trend-oriented publishing climate, you need to either be the celebrity-of-the-moment or you need to have a bulletproof plan to plug into what’s hot, what’s guaranteed, what there’s already an audience for. And, sir/madam/etc., that you don’t already know my name from the tabloids should suggest that, while not infamous for killing or raping or stalking somebody, which is pretty much the standard for literary poten

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Against the Stet

Was reading over a novel I’m about to submit, and kind of just mentally ticking off the things I was going to be writing ‘stet’ by after the copy editor and proofreader have had a go at it (assuming a lot here, I know, but hope springs, all that), so figured it’d maybe just be easier to go ahead and rig up a document-type affair beforehand. Or at least a list — things I always do, things to watch for, things to let slide:…

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Unrevised

quickest of quick notes: new essay up at The Cult. On revision, of all unlikely things. I mean, of all unlikely things for me to be writing about. Anyway, it’s here.

and, nope, no new DEMON THEORY news in the last few, sweltering, basketball-playing, story-workshopping, dog-tying-up-only-to-have-it-chew-through-the-rope, Daily Show watching hours.…

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Jack Bauer for President (&etc)

and Dana Scully for surgeon general, yeah. really though, just here to post a cleaner version of that Demon Theory banner:

[ it may take a bit to load, as it looks like those prior two banners are still down at the bottom of this page, trying to load as well. well, still down there as long as this is the top post, I think ]

really, though, what all this banner-stuff has put me in mind of is revision. or, I should say, “Revision.” that which I never teach but always say is a pret…

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Words That Stick

Maybe it’s this way for everybody, I don’t know. Sometimes I’ll stumble across something in a book, anyway, and it’ll just burrow right to the core of me and never leaves. I say sometimes, but, I suppose, I’m only about to list three. And, it’s not that they’re said all that perfect or anything, it’s more like they’re just obviously true. Trick was, I’d just never thought about them:

  • ‘Everybody has a ce
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House of Fiction

read enough stuff, you can’t help but start keeping lists. this is mine:

https://www.demontheory.net/wp-admin/excl/manifesto.swf

it’s a link now, because I made this with Flash, like 76 years ago, and Flash is tricky to embed in this WordPress that Flash never even dreamed of . . . ]

I’ll probably keep adding to it, yeah. one thing I see now that I forgot to put on there was that oftentimes the writer will be including what seems like gratuitous sexR…

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