August Newsletter

I've been sucking the marrow out of summer break before school starts again, but book stuff never sleeps!

Aug 03, 2023

The Future of Twitter (and Where Else to Find Me)

You may have noticed fewer writer-advice tweets than normal this past month, and I’ll be honest, a lot of that has to do with the direction of Twitter lately. Stripping my verification because I wouldn’t pay for it really chapped my ass, and the rebrand to “X” chapped it even further. I’m just kinda fed up with Elon, but Twitter is where I’ve built my community of writers, which is why I continue to stay. For now.

Down the road, though, as other options become more viable, I may fly the coop. This newsletter is a great place to find me, or you can always drop me a line here:

brighameditorial.com/contact

Or follow me here:

I haven’t posted anything at either place yet, but I’m probably gonna at some point. If you want to stay in touch, I suggest following me everywhere, subscribing to the newsletter, and/or bookmarking my professional website. I don’t want to lose contact with a single one of you!

Writer Advice Recap

If you’re following me on Twitter, you’ve almost certainly bumped into one of my threads offering advice about writing, querying, and publishing. Each month, I break down a few of my favorite threads in case you missed them.

Here’s a recap from this past month:

July’s Most Popular Thread: Top 5 Cuts from Early Drafts

https://twitter.com/joelbrigham/status/1676578365438930946

People love a good list, and for whatever reason, this particular list resonated well with readers. I think it served as a good reminder that we all have certain tendencies when writing a sloppy copy and that no initial draft is perfect. Making these cuts is fairly simple, and the more we do it, the less often we make these same mistakes in later manuscripts.

July’s Most Underrated Thread: Writing GMC

https://twitter.com/joelbrigham/status/1684172074875596801

I really thought this one would pop because GMC is SO important to writing a good story, but it sorta languished for whatever reason. If you missed this one, I suggest reading it, though. It’s a helpful thread!

July’s Most Essential Thread(s): Writing Acts 1, 2, and 3

I wrote a little mini-series of tweet threads this past month breaking down which essential story beats go into Acts 1, 2, and 3. All three are worth reading and bookmarking for the future!

“So It Goes”

When I was a senior in high school, my English teacher made us write an author analysis by reading three books by a great American author and synthesizing themes throughout them. She had a whole list of authors and books to choose from, but I was more or less told I’d be writing about Kurt Vonnegut because my teacher (correctly) thought it would be a good fit for me.

So I read Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Cat’s Cradle and knocked out what in retrospect was a pretty crummy essay. But one thing stuck with me after reading Vonnegut’s books: the expression, “So it goes.”

“So it goes” is a refrain in Slaughterhouse Five, and it essentially means that we have little to no control over our lives so we may as well just roll with the punches. As someone who’s always struggled with control (almost certainly a trauma response from the death of my mother at a young age), I’ve always found a sort of zen in that phrase. I really do love it, and I say it—out loud and in my head—multiple times a day. In fact, I’m pretty sure my wife is sick of hearing it.

I say all of this because I was in Indianapolis earlier this month to watch a Savannah Bananas baseball game (If you’re unfamiliar, look them up on TikTok. You won’t regret it). While we were there, my dad and I visited the Kurt Vonnegut museum, where I got to mingle with several artifacts from the man’s life and even sit as his typewriter.

These kinds of things are always a little spooky and surreal to me. For example, I once visited Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst, Massachusettes, and peered into the bedroom where she wrote all her poems at a tiny desk in the corner. I also visited the home where Mark Twain wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn at the far end of a smoky billiards room on the top floor of his massive Connecticut estate. Being in the hallowed space where literary legends produced their finest work is always a treat, and I was thrilled this month to add Vonnegut to my list.

What I’ve Been Editing

July was BUSY for me, in large part because I participated in the (remote) Carolina Writing Day Workshop by doing first ten-page critiques and video chat follow-ups with many, many authors in a short period of time. There were a couple of days in July where I had back-to-back calls set up for hours at a time, which is the most time I’ve spent in Zoom since I had to teach during COVID.

Still, those video chats are always amazing, as there’s nothing quite like speaking with an author face-to-face about their work. I view my job as an editor as two-faceted: 1. I obviously want to help people land an agent and get their books published, but 2. I also want to provide writers with education to move them closer to that dream, whether publication happens with the current book or not. Looking someone in the eye and telling them what I loved about their book but also encouraging them to move forward as writers is a joy I don’t think I’ll ever get over.

In fact, I was so busy with smaller projects in July that I only was able to find time for two full manuscript developmental edits, one of which brought me so much joy that I walked away feeling like a better person for having read it.

This month, I’m working on bigger stuff, including a LitRPG and a couple of other novels I’m really excited about. Of course, there will be plenty of query letters and synopses and first 10 pages worked into there, too. If you’ve wondered if I’d have the availability to take on your project, keep in mind that small stuff gets worked in pretty quickly, but there’s a queue for full manuscripts that starts in early October at the moment. I’d love to work with you, but please understand that there are folks in line ahead of you!

What I’m Reading

The Amulet Series, by Kazu Kibuishi

My daughters have been reading this MG graphic novel series over the summer and haven’t shut up about how wonderful they are, so it was time for me to read them, too. Put simply, they are stunning. The artwork is a sort of cool mix between anime and steampunk, but it’s the storyline that has me so hooked. I read a lot (a LOT) of fantasy pitches from clients and RevPit entrants, so I know how hard it can be to accomplish tropey stories in ways that don’t feel cliched, but these books nail that. I’m through the third book and am so thirsty for more.

Grown, by Tiffany Jackson

Like a lot of people, I watched that salacious Lifetime R. Kelley docuseries last year and consistently had to pick my jaw up off the floor throughout each episode. We all had a general sense that R. Kelley was a trashbag, but that show really put an exclamation point on it.

Having watched that series, I could recognize the thinly-veiled references to that horrible story with the MC in Jackson’s Grown, a book about a high school girl who ends up in an abusive relationship with a much older R&B superstar. It was a page-turner, for sure, and one of the better books I read all summer. Knowing the author had once been in a relationship with a much older man made the book feel all the more real. It’s a book that speaks strongly an important topic, but that also provides readers with an entertaining ride.

Talking to Strangers, by Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell is one of my favorite authors, and his Revisionist History podcast is one where I devour new episodes the moment they come out. This book, however, didn’t speak to me the way some of his other ones did. As always, there were some fascinating insights from Gladwell’s logical and unique view of the world, but the theme tying everything together felt a little loose.

One big takeaway, though, is that we as humans typically assume the best of each other, which is something that is both evolutionary necessary but also dangerous in the context of people we don’t know.

Thanks for reading! If you’re new here, don’t forget to subscribe, and please share with any other writer buddies you think may benefit.

Hugs and high fives,
-JB