Links and more book-related movie news

Thanks to Mand, who has contributed a nice new section for the Community Story. Who’s going to be next? Follow on the story from the end of Mand’s post in the comments.

And now onto some fun links I’ve stumbled on.

First up, Donald Maass, of Donald Maass Literary Agency, is giving away his book The Career Novelity: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success as a free e-book. I’ve downloaded it and have been perusing the contents. It was written in the ’90s, so the state of the industry might be slightly different than today’s publishing industry. But Maass covers choosing agents, approaching agents and editors, pitching, and includes a sample query letter, as well as much more. All interesting from an agent’s perspective.

Second, the Well Read Rabbit blog, written by writer/illustrator Katherine Battersby, talks about the 7 stages of feedback, going from shock or disbelief at the amount of notes you’ve received to acceptance and hope that you can now make your work better. Like Katherine, although I once went through all these stages, after a few years of getting edited by others, I’ve got a thicker skin now and know not to take notes personally. If I see a lot of corrections, I no longer break down and think, I’m a crap writer, why am I continuing. I can now take the comments that help my story and push away the comments that don’t to get to stage 7 as quickly as possible and continue working. Strive for that, everyone. Don’t let notes get you down. Use them and move on.

Third, Variety has some more book-related movie news. According to the Hollywood trade magazine, DreamWorks has bought the rights to the picture book Dinotruk, which is due out in April (I have to get one for my youngest cousin — he loves dinosaurs, and dinos that are trucks sound awesome), and is planning a CG movie. Looking forward to seeing the book and the movie.

Write On!