Crowdfunding, surprising endings and the world of Wes Anderson

Iain Broome -

It's my three-year freelanciversary this month. 🎉

Later this week I'll be sending you a list of 101 things I've learned about being a freelance writer. It includes exciting advice, useful apps and some terrible jokes.

In the meantime, get stuck into this week's selection of links to the very best of the bookish internet. Or at least the very best that I could find in the time I had.

Comments are open by the way. Let me know if you find something useful or have something to get off your chest. Also, one of the best things about having a newsletter is when people reply and send an email right back. Those are welcome too.

Every issue I collect and share the best advice, apps and other shenanigans that I find on my internet travels. Find something useful? Subscribe for free.

Everything You Need To Know About Wes Anderson's New Flick, The French Dispatch

To quote an excellent tweet from Matt Risby: "I see Wes Anderson has made his film again." We all know exactly what that means. But I have to say, I really like that film. All of them. And I am very excited to see the trailer for The French Dispatch and to note that it is a literally literary story, and that all the usual suspects are in its stellar cast.

There is something about having a body of work that is so distinctly your own that I find really quite alluring.

Other Wes Anderson links:

How to Write an Ending that is Surprising Yet Inevitable

This is a super piece on writing endings that uses examples to illustrate points. Endings are hard to write, right? I completely rewrote the ending to A is for Angelica after I got an agent for the book. And I mean ditched the whole thing, removed thousands of words and wrote even more new ones. It wasn't just how I wrote that changed, but what actually happened. So yes. Endings are hard.

Slick Inbox – a tool for managing your newsletter subscriptions

Everyone in the world is subscribed to at least 200 newsletters. That's a fact. If you're finding your own subscriptions hard to manage, you might like to try Slick Inbox, which is a new app in which all your newsletters can live. It looks great and very similar to Stoop, which I've dabbled with and can recommend too.

What Does ~I Didn’t Fall in Love With it~ Mean?

The words that every author dreads. If you have ever had your work submitted to an agent or editor, I'd be amazed if you hadn't received a reply along the lines of, “This is great, but I just didn't love it enough.”

Almost all of my rejections for A is for Angelica read this way and it was infuriating because I wanted more specific information. So you mostly like it? What shall I change? I'll change anything! Please let me change it and then you will love it (me)!

Kate McKean in her excellent Agents and Books newsletter goes through the various meanings of: "I didn't fall in love with it." Give it a read if you want to get published, because it might make you feel a whole lot better when the inevitable arrives.

Crowdfunding for Books: How to Kickstart Your Dream Project

This post is rather light on actual advice, but does include some examples that might whet your whistle.

I've considered using Kickstarter for various projects, but always think about how much pressure it puts on you to deliver. Like making a thing isn't hard enough without having to worry about the fact people have already paid for it.

I find the idea of people who want to support you paying a few quid a month to invest in you the person rather than this specific project much more appealing. And it seems to me a far healthier relationship to maintain.

Best of the rest

1,000 True Fans? Try 100

How I Stopped Checking My Phone So Much

50 Fictional Booksellers, Ranked

List of 600+ independent UK publishers

Nine Things You Didn’t Know About the Semicolon

The Incredible Creative Power of the Index Card

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