Russell's Writing Blog

About Me


I'm 46, Married with two sons. This blog will document my attempt to get my children's novel published.
Enjoy the blog. To comment on any of the posts, just click on the title of the post you want to comment on.  Play nicely!

How to get a literary agent

November 9, 2013
Following on from my last post, I found this video (40+ minutes) of literary agents talking about getting published, the work of a literary agent and even self publishing to be very useful and informative. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31wOs05wyJQ&feature=youtu.be

Posted by Russell Sanderson. Posted In : Agent update 

 

Advice on agent hunting

October 31, 2013
Although I've not yet signed with an agent myself, I have had a fair amount of success in getting agents to read my manuscript, so I must be doing something right.  As a result a number of other unpublished writers have asked me for advice on how to go about it.  Given that I've repeated this advice a number of times, I think it might be worth putting it on the blog.  If you're writing something and hope to one day publish, hopefully you'll find it useful.

The first thing I'd say is that getti...
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Posted by Russell Sanderson. Posted In : General Writing Advice 

 

It's been a while....

October 12, 2013
Ok - so I haven't posted recently but that doesn't mean that nothing's been happening. I heard back from the agent that I'd sent my improved manuscript to and he agreed - it was much much better, BUT (and there's always a 'but', isn't there?) it still needed a "final polish."   He said that he might have taken me on a year ago when he was still in the early stages of building his list, but now he likes writers to be 100% before he signs them up because he represents the writer, not the book a...
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Posted by Russell Sanderson. Posted In : Agent update 

 

Now where was I?

August 23, 2013

While waiting for the results of my latest efforts to try to get signed with an agent, I decided not to waste time lingering and re-started work on the sequel.  One thing I found straight away was that I had kind of "lost my thread" and needed to get back into the story in order to continue it, so I decided to perform a line by line edit on the 20,000 words I'd already written in order to refresh my memory and make sure I didnt forget any important minor details.

Reaching the end of the proces...
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Posted by Russell Sanderson. Posted In : Writing update 

 

After the editing, the waiting....

July 25, 2013
Two weeks ago, I reached the point where I couldn't edit the book any more without chopping out what I believed to be important sections of the story.  It's only 2000 words longer than the first Harry Potter book at the moment, so hopefully it's in the ballpark. I re-sent it to the literary agent who'd first suggested I reduce the word count and now I have to wait.  It's likely that this wait will be measured in months rather than weeks and though I'm desperate for feedback, I'll resist the u...
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Posted by Russell Sanderson. Posted In : Agent update 

 

Wringing more blood from a stone

June 29, 2013
I'm now on my fifth editing pass to reduce the wordcount of the book by the maximum possible.  It's very much an exercise in the law of diminishing returns, but each pass does yield a reduction, however small.  I'm currently sat at about 81,800 words and I think realistically I'll get to maybe 79,000 words by the time I'm finished.

This time, things are improved by the very able assistance of my god-daughter Natalie, who's just completed the first year of an English Literature degree (with fl...
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Posted by Russell Sanderson. Posted In : Writing update 

 

Guest Blogging with Sam Whitehouse

June 19, 2013
Sam Whitehouse, a writer whose blog I've been following for a while has recently asked me to guest blog on his wordpress blog. If anyone wants to read it or follow Sam's blog about his YA fantasy series, follow the link:
http://sam26051994.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/russell-sanderson-on-writing/


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Posted by Russell Sanderson. Posted In : Writing update 

 

Close, but no cigar

June 7, 2013

Well, this is the end of pass 3 of "operation word reduction."  I've managed to reduce a 118,500 word book to 85,400 although that's still not quite enough.  Although other books for this genre and age bracket have been bigger (Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is 87500 words), they're outliers.  I won't be able to relax until I get to a number in the 70,000s.

It's an odd sort of task really.  I described it recently as like a sculptor trying to shrink a 10ft statue into an identical 7ft o...


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Posted by Russell Sanderson. Posted In : Writing update 

 

Keep chipping away

May 23, 2013
Another week into the editing and I'm down to 88,000 words.  There are definitely diminishing returns in this editing lark (because I am trying not to make changes to the actual story) but i'm quite impressed with how far I've come. The book started at 118,500 words, so that's 30,000 gone.  I think I will aim for maybe 11k more and that will be challenge enough. 

I've done some research and the first Harry Potter book was 77,000 words, the first Skulduggery Pleasant was 75,000, the first Arte...
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Posted by Russell Sanderson. Posted In : Writing update 

 

Slowly does it.

May 11, 2013
Well, as predicted the editing has slowed down as it progressed to the second sweep.  I'm down to about 95,000 words so maybe 20,000 still to chop and am just over halfway through my second pass through the book. I'm saving bits and prieces for the next book but nothing major.  Thus far I've managed to do most of it by thinning the existing text, shortening conversations and using tighter language, but I think I might get to the high 80,000s and then be left with only the actual meat of the s...
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Posted by Russell Sanderson. Posted In : Writing update 

 
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