I’m going to the San Francisco Writers Conference! It’s February 12-17. I’m going to this particular conference because the novel that I’m trying to publish is very definitely set in San Francisco. I went in 2016 and had a wonderful time but did not use the contacts I made in any kind of useful way. […]
Archive | January, 2019
Why Won’t They Talk to Me?
I thought it would be easy. Don’t we old people love to talk about our memories of the past? You generally can’t get us to shut up. Yet so far I have not managed to interview anyone at all. Why won’t they talk to me? I asked respectfully and carefully. “Nancy, I’ve so enjoyed your […]
Interview Questions: St. Johns Memories
These are the interview questions for when I ask people for their St. Johns memories. What year were you born? Were you born in St. Johns? Or when did you arrive here? Have you lived here all your life? Or where else have you lived, and at what ages? Where are your parents from? When […]
The Interview Strategy
For that perfect day job that I recently quit, I became adept at interviewing people. I learned how to prepare a detailed, thorough list of questions in advance. I learned how to keep the interviewee happy about talking to me, and how to control the conversation so the person doesn’t wander off into long stories […]
Sending Agent Query Emails (It’s Scary)
My website was down for a whole week, so I missed my Monday blog post, sorry. Here it is now. I hereby promise to send at least one agent query a week. That doesn’t sound like much, does it? But it is actually pretty labor-intensive. First you have to identify agents to query. One way […]