Minor Leagues

Think of book agents as something akin to baseball talent scouts. These are the guys who sit in the bleachers at high school games and generally just watch. What are they looking for? What interests them more, raw talent or hustle? What brings them here, and will they be back? A real player who wants to “make it” needs to know.

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For the Kids

Why on earth would anyone want to be a writer?

In my case, I avoided the idea for many years. I won a few contests as a kid, and genuinely enjoyed writing. But none of it was really for the public. It was simply something I did. Is there a career based on breathing?

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Credentials

By education, I am not a writer. The nice piece of paper says “Chemical Engineering” on it.

I don’t consider this to be a problem, however. I taught myself to be a writer largely by watching the world around me and gently crumbling it up onto a piece of paper with scribblings in English. Teaching myself to edit was a more difficult problem, since it took re-reading my own stuff and not recoiling in horror at the mistakes. But I did it.

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