Brandon Sanderson Had 13 Books Rejected Before Hitting It Big And Earning Millions
Most writers have novels that never see the light of day. But 13? That’s serious dedication. The books were written over a decade while Sanderson was working as a night clerk at a hotel – a job chosen specifically because as long as he stayed awake, his bosses didn’t mind if he wrote between midnight and 5am. But publishers kept telling him that his epic fantasies were too long, that he should try being darker or “more like George RR Martin” (it was the late 90s, and A Song of Ice and Fire was topping bestseller charts). His attempts to write grittier books were terrible, he says, so he became “kind of depressed”. – The Guardian
What The Philadelphia Museum Of Art’s Workplace Assessment Found (It Wasn’t Pretty)
The study, conducted by outside consultants at the board’s request after two majorscandalsbroke earlier this year, “found problems and deficiencies at all levels of the hierarchy — from the boardroom on down, museum leaders told staff members at an online meeting Tuesday.” At least, said one staffer, “I was encouraged by how honest [the presentation] felt.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Big Sort: All Fiction Can Be Organized In Four Categories
Tim Parks: “All of narrative fiction, I’ve suggested, can be sorted into four grand categories. Each presents a rich world of feeling in which any number of stories can be told and positions established, but always in relation to, or rather, driven by, a distinct cluster of values and consequent emotions. My claim is that it really is worth being aware which of these worlds we are being drawn into. We read better. We know where we are. And what the dangers are.” – New York Review of Books