January 23, 2007

BlogBites

Surely you must hear my not-so-silent screams... The Book Standard reports that JENNA BUSH is shopping a YA book.

Oh, please, God. Please. Make it STOP.

Meanwhile, high congratulations to Sharon Draper for winning the Coretta Scott King Award with Copper Sun, which I haven't yet read, but at least I've seen and heard of, unlike the Newbery winner...

Every once in awhile I pop over to Dooce, the website of Heather B. Armstrong, the woman who blogged a bit too freely (in a completely anonymous way) about her work life, and ended up... fired. Writer's Digest spoke recently about the same thing, as a reminder to savvy writers -- Your blog is not your home, and there are ears -- eyes -- who walk freely through your doors, and -- as you hope, read your words. This might give you pause as you chat about your agent, your editor, your hopes for a work being published. Especially about someone else's work, it's sometimes a positive thing to err on the side of caution... I've been pleasantly (thus far) surprised by the number of author comments I've gotten when reviewing books. Even the great Jane Yolen does what she calls "ego-scanning" and finds out what people are saying about her -- and cares what they say.

I guess everybody really does want to be liked.

1 comment:

David T. Macknet said...

Too true: nobody (even those spawn of NeoConservative Bushies) deserves to have Jenna Bush inflicted upon their reading. On the other hand, perhaps she's got a ghost writer ... maybe one of her rehab counselors or something? One of the writers from Girls Gone Wild?