Do Re-readers Tend to Be Revisers?

So today on twitter, agent Holly Root proposed a theory:  Editors tend to have been re-readers as kids; agents were rarely re-readers. (via Molly O'Neill)

I don't know about agents and editors, but that made me wonder how re-reading and re-writing are related for writers.  I proposed my own hypothesis:  Writers who like revising were re-readers as kids. Writers who like first drafts, not so much.

People on twitter started weighing in, some who fit this pattern, and some who didn't.  Which made me curious enough to put up a little unscientific poll. 

What are your rereading and revising preferences?  (Email subscribers and people reading in feed readers will need to click through to the web page to take the poll.)

poll by twiigs.com

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The Psychology of Attraction: The Intertwining of Sex and Aggression

"His gaze flickered to my lips. I got that. He was once again furious with me and once again perfectly ready to have sex with me. The conundrum that was Barrons. Apparently it was impossible for him to feel anything as far as I was concerned without getting angry about it. Did anger make them want to have sex with me? Or was it that he always wanted to have sex with me that made him so angry?"

--Shadowfever, by Karen Marie Moning


So I’m looking back over the "Psychology of Attraction" series, and so far we have fear, uncertainty, and now aggression. Which makes me think I should clarify some things before y'all stage an intervention. This series is not meant to be a picture of how healthy relationships work, or even how the majority of relationships work. They’re interesting tidbits that might be useful for a novelist. As often is the case, the healthy cases don’t always make interesting stories.

Actually, that's an interesting thought -- that the pathological makes for more gripping stories. Is it true? Is it desirable? Which dovetails nicely into today's post.

When I was researching the article on fear, I ran across some old studies exploring the relationship between aggression and sexuality. The basic idea was that the experimenters made test participants angry and then tested them for sexual arousal.

Showcase The Sexy, But Don't False Advertise (and other lessons I learned when writing my book pitch)

Disclaimer: I’m not a professional slush reader, nor am I a veteran indie author who’s A/B tested dozens of cover blurbs. But I had a decent request rate for my query letters (52% asked for partials or fulls), and agent Jim did use my unmodified query to pitch Midnight Thief in the DGLM newsletter. (Jim also asked to use it as an example in his classes on query writing, which did amazing things for my ego, until Secretly-Supportive-But-Very-Mischievous-Husband asked if the class was called “How Not to Write A Query.” Ah, what are our loved ones for, if not to keep us humble.)

These are the lessons I learned while I was writing my query. Hopefully you will find something helpful for your own queries, book blogger pitches, etc...

1. Showcase the sexy


You’d think that a writer would know what’s sexy about her novel, but that wasn’t true in my case. My first query draft began: