James Buchanan's Blog
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Dec.02.2008
It doesn't really matter if the economy is strong or in tatters as it currently is, the challenge and importance of writing a very good query letter are always the same. If you can't catch the eye of an agent or publisher your writing is simply going nowhere.
For me, I obsess over nearly every...
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Dec.01.2008
As I look at how the economy has battered the publishing industry and look for an angle within which I may be able to successfully pitch and sell my book on the Americans that fought in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, the one thing that becomes clear is my proposal must hit on the multimedia...
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Nov.30.2008
While digesting on Thanksgiving I sat down with a photographer friend of mine (http://www.louiskapeleris.com) and talked with him about the convergence if images and text. He is a very talented photographer, but relatively new to the world of photojournalism and we talked about how collaborating...
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Nov.26.2008
My son has Asperger's syndrome, which is a mild form of autism that presents some challenges for him in terms of how he relates to people as well as some learning disabilities. Perhaps his most challenging learning disability is that he has a very difficult time with writing. This is especially...
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Nov.25.2008
Hi All.
I've put an excerpt from a memoir I am working on about my year going through treatment with cancer and would enjoy and suggestions that others would care to forward. It can be found at: http://www.orchardwriting.com/memoirsamplechapter.html.
Thanks,
James
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Nov.25.2008
I can't quite remember where it was that I found the bit of advice that is the title of this post. It may have been the New Yorker or it may have been a book I am reading on the poet Donald Hall.
At any rate, it was enough to get me up out of bed when I read it and jot it down in a post-it note so...
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Nov.23.2008
Describing sex or writing in a sexual way can give a story a little more to draw the eye in as we all know that titilating the reader is really the goal of any good writing. This is not to say that the only good writing involves some sort of sexual aspect, but good writing does touch something in...
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Nov.21.2008
A few years ago while at the Wesleyan writers' conference I sat and listened to a popular writer describe the state of the novel. The question he was attempting to answer--though he only did so rather obliquely--was whether the novel as we have come to know and love it will be able to persist or if...
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Nov.20.2008
A week or two ago I came up with a blog entry to help ghost writers work more efficiently with there clients.
The basis of it is a framework that I am developing. I would love to have any thoughts, ideas, refinements, suggestions and etc. that folks may care to give.
The framework:
Step 1 -- what...
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Nov.18.2008
I am working on a book about the American volunteers that fought on the side of the Spanish government against the Nazis and fascists in the Spanish Civil War and am having trouble deciding how to write the book. I have a vision for what I want the book to accomplish, sort of the strategic side of...
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Nov.17.2008
I'm a cancer survivor and while going through a discussion board dedicated to people who have experienced colorectal cancer I came upon a thread from someone who's birthday is coming up. Unfortunately for her she was diagnosed on her birthday, but rather than turn it into a painful reminder of how...
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Nov.14.2008
My whole life I have had to battle the demons of sleeplessness. In fact, one of my earliest memories is of regularly having trouble with sleep. Now, though, I can add the pressures of parenthood and the need to work and a wife that awakes for work at the ghastly hour of 5 am and the need for me to...
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Nov.12.2008
As I worked on a book proposal for a nonfiction book that I would like to write it became obvious to me that I needed to better hone what the book is about. It is not a broad subject. Rather it is narrowly focused on the Americans who volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War of the mid 1930s...
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Nov.11.2008
There is a certain truism to the fact that writers perhaps are a sleepless bunch. We are either rising early in order to catch the morning light, which is something of a salve for writer's block. Or we are in the processing of trying to sell some important piece of new writing and waiting for...
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Nov.10.2008
With the economy the way that it is freelance writers are going to have an even tougher time than in the past recession at making a living.
The first issue is that we are generally on the last hired, first fired lists of most companies and publications. For example, if you eanr at least part of...
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About James
James Buchanan is a 46-year-old writer living in the Seacoast region of New Hampshire with his two young children-Quincy and Violet and their leopard gecko Spotty.
Born in 1965 in Philadelphia, James attended Quaker schools throughout the elementary and...
Causes James Buchanan Supports
Expanding health care in the US, ending war as a viable tool of foreign policy, and issues related to social justice in general.
James’s Favorite Books
The Kite Runner, The Orchard, Cider House Rules, Water for Elephants, The Dive from Clausen's Pier, To Kill a Mockingbird, On Chesil Beach, Under the Tuscan...