I spent the weekend at “The Last Book Auction” in Archer City, Texas. You can read what the Austin Chronicle had to say about it [there’s even a picture of me in the gallery]. I’d read about this book store and really wanted to go, and this seemed like the perfect reason to make the trip.

I just came across these rejection letters I got when my book agent, Byrd Leavell and I originally shopped the manuscript for I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell (the tentative title at the time was “Belligerence and Debauchery”). Enjoy:

• William Morrow
• Broadway
• St. Martins

Just something to think about:

I get asked questions every day about how to be a writer and how to get published, it’s the most frequent topic of advice emails sent to me, actually. Because of this, Nils and I are the process of writing a comprehensive set of posts about what it means to be a creative writing professional in the age of the internet and precisely how to do that. So yes, I will answer ALL those emails I get from people asking me “how to be a writer.” We’re going to cover everything that could possibly be relevant to modern creative writing professional, and do it in a way that has never been done before–from a battle-tested, proven perspective with tons of specific, actionable information and real world examples. There are pretty much no books about writing that do anything like that, so we’re going to write it.

I know this isn’t the “best” way to deal with the modern short media cycle, but when something big happens, I usually like to let it simmer and settle before I comment on it. There are a lot of reasons for this, the main one is that the implications of something often take a long time to work out, and immediate commentary is usually nothing more than worthless chattering or visceral reaction. There’s enough of that, and not enough deep reflection.

Some people asked for more examples in this post about how to find a mentor; specifically, they want to know how to figure out how to provide enough value to a prominent person to be able to even get started on a relationship. I could go find a bunch of examples involving other people, but instead, one very specific one popped up in my life. It’s the opposite of what most people are expecting. Instead of showing how someone came to me to establish a relationship, I’ll show you how I approached a hero of mine to establish a relationship: Steven Pressfield.