When I took the single creative writing course my high school offered, it was a one-semester elective with a poetry unit and a fiction unit. I was a senior, and I knew the teacher from when he’d started a creative writing group at the junior high four years earlier, when I was in eighth grade. …
First, of course, I’m back on the blog after a pretty long hiatus, so let me give you a quick update! After signing with my literary agent at the tail end of July, I dove into some final revisions of my manuscript before she began submitting it to editors, and then she and I spent …
If you haven’t heard the news...I have an agent! I was incredibly excited to sign on with Marlene Stringer of the Stringer Literary Agency at the end of July. Since the day I spoke with her on the phone, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind, asking questions, signing the agreement, a bit of waiting …
Are you tired of writing & childbirth comparisons yet? I made one a few months back, though it might not have been quite the metaphor you expected. Today I have a new one! In lieu of attending the Historical Novel Society’s annual conference last month (my oldest’s softball tournament got in the way!), I gifted …
I've learned by now that agents have very particular likes and dislikes. After all, they’re just readers, and everyone has their own preferences. I recently read an agent wish list that specified she wanted no stories where a woman gave up her career for love or family. I also read a novel a few weeks …
When I was ten years old, my parents gave me the thrill of my life: they finally agreed to adopt a cat. We chose a cat at the shelter and named him Punkin (Punky for short), a name I pulled straight out of a what-to-name-your-pet book filled with photos of fluffy felines. Punky was arguably …
New Year’s Eve, 2006. Four months earlier, I had moved to a different state to attend graduate school, leaving behind my family, my church, and a particularly good friend in whom I was romantically interested. It wasn’t a huge secret that I wanted this friend to be more than a friend, but I’d never outright …
Back in March, I participated in my first pitch event on Twitter (you can read about that experience here!). While I didn’t come away with any likes from agents that first time around, I garnered enough benefits to do it again, which I did on June 3, armed with three brand-new pitches (for the same …
Continue reading Saturday Six #27: When I Could Have Given Up
Recently, another writer complimented the heroine in my novel when she read the first few chapters. She said, “I absolutely LOVE that Esther is not a 21st century heroine stuck in 1911! I can’t tell you how annoying it is to read about a character whose beliefs/thoughts/feelings are just not realistic for the specified time …
The last romantic comedy I read (Shipped by Angie Hockman...super fun, I recommend it!) was set in 2019. The publishing industry runs a couple years behind "real time," so despite its 2021 release, the novel was likely written well before 2019. But it also felt like a very deliberate decision to set the book before the …
Andrea Green, Author 