Wednesday links: Rejections, your magic number, and off-screen characters

I love regularly reading tips and advice articles in certain subjects — particularly writing and publishing. I don’t always need the information right then, but I know that it’ll eventually come in handy. Or at least, I hope it will.

I know there are a lot of other people out there who feel the same way I do, but sometimes it can be difficult to find every useful advice article that’s out there. So I thought I’d bring you a few. Here are the tips and advice articles that jumped out at me the most over the past week.

1. That special something, from Dystel & Goderich Literary Management: Have you ever received a rejection that said something along the lines of, “I like it, but it’s not for me.”? You’re not alone. And it’s not a response that you should take personally. Excerpt: “And some of that is because there is only so much time in a day, so agents can’t offer feedback to all the projects they turn down and still actually have time to fulfill the obligations to the clients they’ve signed on. But it’s also true that sometimes that is simply the answer.
2. What Is Your Magic Number?, from Pub Rants: Rarely does a writer’s first manuscript get published. But exactly how many you need to write depends entirely on you. Excerpt: “Ninety-nine-percent of the time, overnight-success stories are fiction. Most of these stories don’t divulge that the author ghostwrote ten novels for other people, or wrote three of their own novels that are tucked away because the author was working on craft.”
3. Don’t Accidentally Give Your Characters a Time Out, from Writer Unboxed: What are your characters doing when they’re not in the scene you’re focusing on? If you’re not sure, it’d be a good idea to figure it out. Excerpt: “Or – and this is the most likely – have you inadvertently pressed the pause button, and sent them into stasis? As in, out of sight, out of mind.”