I heard it the most, as I am guessing most authors do, in the course of receiving rejections for a book. From publishers in Canada, the United States and Britain, I heard great compliments – it’s clever, it’s funny, you’re, you know, nice and all that – but we’re looking for a somewhat bigger book.

It, of course, first occurred to me that they meant longer, or maybe just heavier. Couldn’t they fix that with a thicker binding? But no, I was dimly aware that it must be code for something. So I asked around. One editor couldn’t really answer, as if it were a trade secret, what big means, and if you don’t know what it is then you don’t got it. Even my agent wasn’t quite clear on it. She hinted that it was just something you knew when you saw it.

It started to feel like a Da Vinci Code sort of thing – a conspiracy. Everyone in publishing is looking for big and everyone knows what big means except the authors.

Smith goes on to attempt decryption of the “big” conspiracy. It’s something for me to keep in mind, though I can’t speak to it as I haven’t pitched yet. But are publishers looking for trendy over lasting?

What counts as a big issue, I am guessing, is a trendy one, an issue of the moment. A black man who wants to become president, sex abuse in the Vatican, environmental disaster, Internet life. Or some kind of unlikely combination: black president and vampires; environment and Vatican; Facebook and global killer disease. Those would be big. (Black pope would be brilliant. You can’t have that one; it’s mine.) And, of course, it goes without saying, the Holocaust is still and always big – indeed, recently writers can be forgiven for wondering if there is any point to writing about anything else. (You can imagine the clever inventions going around our bars about how brilliant it would be to do some kind of “green” Holocaust novel.)

For any of my readers out there who have pitched, is this concept something you’ve heard of? This mysterious “big”? Let me know, or go leave a comment on Smith’s article.

It began with fiction. Once I began blogging about news, politics and war, I stopped reading fiction. My fortunes went to pay for non-fiction tomes on subjects that gave me nightmares.

Then I gave up books altogether. Magazine articles were better suited to my blogger’s attention span.

Until even magazine articles became too long! My attention span became so short I started reading only other blog posts.

I had to retrain my brain to stop eating candy and start eating fiber again!

Fiction. Fun, cheap, sleazy fiction helped get me back into reading.  I picked up something light and fluffy, easy to rip through, and spent a weekend reading it over coffee.

Then I tacked some heavier political non-fic. It took longer. More than two weeks! I kept putting the book down to do something else, wandering off, forgetting about it. But I stuck with it and finished the damn thing.

When you blog, it’s easy to have your attention span eaten away. It’s the nature of the best. Especially with 24-hour news channels blaring their 2-minute sound bites in the background. Everything these days seems to come in easily digested single serving portions, but sometimes you need more substance.

Don’t let blogging eat your brain. Keep it in fighting form with New Yorker-length articles and good juicy books.

The Web Articles:

• 50 Tips to Improve Your Writing
• Recipe for Blog Success (tasty!)
• Is Online Education More Effective than Traditional Learning?

The Books:

• How to Eat Like a Hot Chick (I’ve read this a dozen times)
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – the only way Austen is palatable to me
• Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom
• The Well-Fed Writer Book – second reading (Bowerman also offers a “ The Well-Fed Self-Publisher Book ” book

It’s back to school time. What’s on your reading list?

You’re all invited to send in an abbreviated 15-page proposal, fiction or non-fiction, which should include the following elements:

1.  “Hook” or overview (one page)
2.  Chapter outline (three pages)
3.  Platform (one page)
4.  Writing sample consisting of the first ten pages of the book

Please take a look at an earlier post, The book proposal: Here’s what publishers want for more detail on each of these elements.

When you’re ready, send the 15 pages as a single Word document email attachment to me at: alan@alanrinzler.com

This is a very big deal, especially for a first-time writer. If you’ve never been able to get your pitches in the door of a publisher or agency in the past, Rinzler can probably help you end the torture by finding out why.

Better hurry up, as I expect he’ll be inundated with requests. He has already said he can’t get to everyone, so be sure to write an intriguing pitch and get his attention!

Traditional book publishing – or dead tree publishing – is anything but instantaneous. You write a query. Send it off. Get a little feed back. Revise, add detail, add facts to back you up (in non-fic). Write a sample chapter. Send it off. Wait. Follow up. Wait… It’s a completely different world. Do I carry on researching while I wait for a decision? Do I keep writing the story even without confirmation of a contract? What if I get a no? Thoughts like these do not apply to blogging, which is probably why I’ve been doing it for five years now.

This is the first time, ever, that I’ve been in talks with a dead tree publisher, and it’s weird. What are normal time frames? How long does the process take? Is it different for every publisher/genre/market/book/astrological sign??

I have one writer friend that is still revising a book she sold almost three years ago – in fact, her next book will be on the market before her first one. Is this what I’m getting myself into? Oh dear.

So what, if any, are the benefits to dead tree publishing? Well, there’s recognition. Validation. Exposure in a different market (not everyone reads blogs, which is sacrilege as far as I’m concerned!). A certain credibility not given to online work. And there’s the feeling of holding your tangible product in your hands.

So I persevere in conquering this new old world of books. And I shall drag you all kicking and screaming along for the journey.

Yes, I will admit to the occasional one-hour Guitar Hero break. Clears the head, you know. But I do not spend all day in front of the XBox.

But bedtime is different. Ever since getting into politics and making terror my niche, my nightmares have increased from one or two a week to five or six. So I no longer read topical books on politics or war at bedtime. My ex-husband made a rule about it, and I have stuck by it. I’ve gone back to fluffy fiction.

At bedtime I wind down and try to switch off my brain. I try my best (but often fail) to stop worrying about different jobs or bills etc. Freelancers need to relax as much as anyone else. So I am currently reading the Tom Holt Omnibus 5, Tall Stories, which I got for Christmas. I get to laugh on my way to Nod, without terror or bombings or buildings falling down. I get to sleep.

What do y’all read to wind down from a busy day? Magazines? Trade journals? Or fluffy fiction like me?

High school English class frustrated me because by 9th grade they were assigning The Chrysalids, which I had read in 5th grade. And in 10th grade, when we were presented with Steinbeck’s The Pearl, I read it in a night and then had to wait for all the other n00bs to catch up. Yawn.

I read way better books after leaving school with my GED than I ever would have read in class. And I got more out of them because I read them for fun. The Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, a whack of Dickens, The Annotated Alice (Through the Looking Glass), Lolita (regular and annotated, it is my favorite book of all time), Gone With the Wind (who knew Scarlett had two other kids???), Crime and Punishment, Victor Hugo (one of my favorite quotes is from Hunchback*), Ernest Hemingway (God bless the mad bastard)… suffice it to say I am a lady of letters.

I am the boring auntie who buys her nieces and nephews books for Christmas when they are six or eight years old. And not just like *a* book, either, but a collection of them. One of my faves was to buy the leather-bound Dickens collection for the boys, and the Narnia collector’s editions for the girls. Heck, I even gave in to peer pressure and popularity one year and bought the Harry Potter books for my eldest nephew, who suddenly became a bookworm because of it. Ah, talk about pride in my accomplishments!

Well, the kids are older now, and I have them all hooked on books. So I was thinking something a little meatier this year, like the collected works of Ernest Hemingway for the eldest. Maybe one of those one-book-a-month type deals. You know, a year’s worth of gifts, starting at Christmas? I’d love to know that by the end of the year next year, he could be curled up reading A Movable Feast. Thoughts?

*God’s lightning does not strike the lettuce plant.

Gayla McCord at MomGadget writes most eloquently about the help she got just from reading the ProBlogger book, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.

Her article is very moving and extremely persuasive. Who isn’t looking for a miracle right now? God knows I am.

And now, a week after launching Girl on the Write Freelancing, suddenly writers are peeking out of the woodwork. I get an email from old pal Michael, who I hear from maybe 10 times a year, saying “Hey, I’m about to publish my second novel!” Second?

What about the first? I never even knew there was a first!

So congratulations to friend Michael, who never even told me he was a writer.

When I was a child I dreamed of being a writer, of not having to leave the house on rainy days (like today), of being able to move around and not have to switch careers mid-stream. Now I’m finally doing it. However, it meant leaving a $45,000-a-year lifestyle. No, it’s not a lot, but it was more than enough for me.

Now I have to learn to work my freelancing model so that I can start earning the same amount again. I’m hopeful. My first month I made $130. The second and third months I made $50 combined. This month’s earnings will be over $500! I have made good contacts and been given repeat assignments. I am building a good base for myself. I am marketing my skills as a freelance writer.

I still have so much to learn, but as it turns out I know much more than I thought I did. The years of blogging for free are finally paying off – now I can blog for money, too! I spend a lot of time reading articles by other freelancers who have been at this way longer than me, too. And books! Lots of books! I’m a member of MediaBistro, where the higher end jobs are posted. They have a book I will be ordering, Get a Freelance Life.

Another one I want is My So-Called Freelance Life. The table of contents makes it not only seem informative, but it is written in the easy-going style I appreciate. Not for me the collegiate texts of yore! In fact, the opening section is called “You fled the cube – now what?” How perfect is that?