Thinking with the Heart

Sometimes epiphanies come to you from the oddest places.  Mine came to me from researching, for a novel, the ancient Egyptian concept of soul, of which the heart is an important part.  The ancient Egyptians believed the heart was the source of both thoughts and feelings, unlike in our times where our heart symbolizes the seat of our emotions and our brain the seat of our reason.  In our world, thoughts and feelings are often in conflict with each other.  In the Egyptian world, they must have lived in harmony.  This realization lead to several ideas for my writing career and life in general.  You can read them by clicking the following links:

• Writing Career Post 1 at Happy Freelancer Blog
• Writing Career Post 2 at Fantasy Fiction Blog
• Happiness and Work Post at Happiness Spotter Blog

Enjoy reading them, and I hope through them, you too will be inspired to begin thinking with your Egyptian heart.

On Agent Revision Letters

I have been reading agency blogs today, something I used to rabidly peruse, now not so much. BookEnds blog recently posted this about revision letters to non-clients:

"Remember that revisions to a submission are only just the tip of the iceberg. Revision letters to my clients can be pages and pages long. I’m not going to spend that time on a submission. Therefore, you have to carefully read between the lines. Look at what I’m saying and then beyond that, and fix it all."  (bold is mine)

The above is best applied to all revision advice, except set-in-stone grammar. Why? Because, quite frankly, not everyone can teach. Teaching requires the ability to juggle two different mindsets, the expert's and the novice's.  So, don't expect your agent to be a teacher on top of it all. His primary job is dealing with the publishers and contracts, not to instruct you on how to write and revise. Your writing quality, before and after revisions from an agent, is up to you and you alone.