I’ve been amused at the responses of friends since I started poking around with a blog. “Wow, you’re a good writer!” they say. These people know I’ve been writing my entire career. :rolleyes:
I choose to believe they’re just bad at issuing compliments. 
I wonder where he gets his ideas.
I like the way Stephen King deals with this question. The gist is that everybody has a mesh screen in their minds and as things get sifted through, somethings get caught and some get discarded. The things that get caught become plot bunnies (well King didn’t say plot bunnies, that’s my contribution to the metaphor).
I also like, “What is your favorite book you have written?”
I’ve never heard an author say anything other than “The last book I wrote.”
Portland has an Arts and Lectures program, and after the lecture they have patrons write questions on cards, and then the author gets to choose which questions to answer. Awesome!
A close second is, “What books do you read?” I can see how that’s of interest, but I really don’t care what a writer reads. I also don’t care what bands a singer listens to.
Well written OP. I find that this is the case with any craft that takes effort to master - typical queries and issues include:
How do I get started doing what you do? Can you get me started?
You know that thing that’s central to being good at the craft? How do I learn that? Can you just unlock that secret for me?
How can I avoid putting in the 10,000 hours of time Malcolm Gladwell says, on average, that people considered “geniuses” have actually invested in mastering their area?
How can I avoid the reality that actually practicing the craft counts for maybe 20% of getting my work out there? Can’t stuff like editors, distributors and marketing - the stuff you spend 80% of your time doing so someone will actually see your craft - can’t all that pesky stuff just solve itself?
Same as it ever was :rolleyes:
Didn’t that novel get submitted as the plot for an entire season of Dallas?
cricetus, I assume that none of these people have ever taken the trouble to go to the websites of agents and publishers to see what they say they want? Easier to ask you.
Which goes hand in hand with all the people who want to avoid the “million words of crap” they have to write before they get to the good stuff. Yeah, it’s daunting to think that you need to write the equivalent of ten novel-length works in your life to get to the publishable stuff, but in my experience it’s true. That’s the real take away from the stories about the famous authors who received 500 rejections or 1000 rejections before their big breakthrough. The real point of those stories isn’t that publishers suck and they won’t recognize your genius. The real point is that those people needed to write hundreds of stories before they were publishable. Carrie is a great book, but it wasn’t the first thing King ever wrote…
Another classic in the genre of “why was my manuscript rejected?”: Slushkiller
Just wondering, but what would be examples of sensible, worthwhile questions to ask an author or publisher at a Q & A session?
Or is that a stupid question too?
Or is holding Q & A sessions for such people stupid?
That’s an excellent question njtt. I guess I don’t mind the idea question, because I just talk about how each book came about. I also know that people just want to ask something and they are stuck. I find myself asking the same thing… not “where do you get your ideas?” but, “why this book? how did this one come about?” That can lead to the author’s favorite topic: himself and the workings of his genius mind (or herself/her genius mind, of course). The content of the books is always good. Or other books. “What’s the last book you read?” Gives me a chance to pimp a friend’s book.
Booze to write / coke to edit, of course.
I would have assumed the reverse.
My favorite personal advice for self-described “Authors”*;
1> “Publishing” your crappy poems or essays on your own web page or in a Usenet group does NOT make you a “published author”.
2> Proclaiming yourself a published author doesn’t make you a more valuable human being or entitle you in any way to look down on or belittle other people who have not written anything.
3> Once more with feeling; Because it is written in a book doesn’t make it true.
It’s the American Idol thing. I’m a great singer, my friends tell me I am all the time! I read a book once, I’m sure I could write one! I watch so much TV, I think just a show following me and my friends would be the next Seinfeld (well okay, it could be the next Hills or Jersey Shore).
Perhaps for the coke, but editing while drunk leads to bigger morning after regrets than drunk sex.
One thing I can tell those contestants and all aspiring writers: nobody is ever, ever going to “be sorry.”
I have to remind myself of that pretty frequently. Like when I read GoodReads reviews. 
Here’s a good question to ask the next midlist author whose signing you attend: What’s below the midlist?
(I went to a talk by a few book reviewers and one of them described Lee Child as “a good midlist writer.” If Lee Child is a good midlist writer then I am somewhere in the Marianas Trench.)
That jerk got his first published story when he was in high school.
I do care. I’ve gotten lots of great tips this way and learned of wonderful writers I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise, or at least not nearly as soon.
I’ll often read a book recommended by a writer whose work I like, and sometimes I don’t like it. But it’s paid off often enough.
What about questions like “Why did you choose ____ as the setting for your story?”