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21 May 2012 - What's new

21 May 2012
  • 'I wouldn't use the word "fun" to describe the process (of writing). It's like someone has said "OK, you have to scrub St Paul's Cathedral. Now here's your toothbrush." It looks overwhelming, but you think in terms of scrubbing one brick at a time. One chapter, one sentence, one word at a time, and eventually you'll get there.' George R R Martin in The Times in our Comment column.
  • Links to recent stories Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world. This week: How a book is born, It doesn't matter what e-books cost to make and Serious Non-fiction in the Digital Age.
  • If you want editorial input from our professional editors, have a look at our 18 Services, especially our Editor's Report, Submission Critique and Children's Services. Also available is Copy editing, Manuscript Typing and what we call Manuscript Polishing - getting your manuscript ready for publication if you are not a native English speaker and need some help to get it right.
  • 'As if there wasn't enough change going on in the publishing world at the moment, the British government has decided to take a hand in academic publishing, having just concluded that a new model would work better. For years publishers have undertaken this kind of scholarly publishing which is financed by book and journal sales, yet now government minister David Willetts is suggesting that open access is the way forward.' News Review on academic publishing.
  • Our Writing Opportunity this week is the H G Wells Short Story Competition, closing on 22 July and especially welcoming to younger writers.
  • Bob's Journal of a Virtually Unpublished Writer offers entertaining insights into the life of an aspiring writer. It's a WritersServices exclusive and you can go back to the start in 2001 and right through to its end in December 2007, when he reflected: 'Still haven't broken through my writer's block. No longer even sure I want to. Why write? What's writing for? Have absolutely no idea. How can one add anything worthwhile to the work of writers like Oscar Wilde? Yet the internet grows more vast by the minute with the words of the millions who are certain their opinions are worth airing.'
  • 'When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.' Ernest Hemingway in our fantastic Writers' Quotes.