HeyJaredDevon Halliday
writer, editor, teacher, & former literary agent offering advice on publishing, craft, & the writing life
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 8
- Latest publication
- Sep 28, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 9, 2026
Latest issues
Force Reset of Life Priorities (opens the original)
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I’ve been a little quiet lately. Here’s the situation: someone close to me got in a bad car accident two weeks ago. They will be okay—in the sense that okay is visible on the horizon, but it’ll be a long walk to get there.I am lucky that my life is so flexible. I have no kids, no pets, just one very understanding and supportive partner. So I was able to travel straight to the hospital the day after the accident. I’ll be hanging out in Hospital World for the next couple weeks, which, you can beli
The Good News Factory (opens the original)
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Whenever I envy-scroll Instagram (which is the only way to scroll Instagram), my eye catches on a dozen posts by writers celebrating various accomplishments. Got a blurb from this high-profile writer. Got reviewed by this high-profile outlet. Got interviewed on this high-profile podcast. Unboxing video! Got an essay published by this high-profile magazine. Got accepted to this high-profile residency. Writing desk pic!My reaction, upon whizzing past these posts at light speed, is some mixture of
How to Give Feedback (opens the original)
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A few months ago, I gave some bad feedback on a novel draft.Actually, the feedback itself was pretty good. But my delivery was all wrong. The writer got prickly, defensive, dismissive. She took my letter apart point by point, arguing for each of the choices she’d made, and against each of the changes I’d suggested.In my response to her email, I said some placating things, walked back some of my advice, added some extra praise, and we ended the exchange on decent terms. But I knew that I hadn’t r
Literary Fiction Has Lost the Plot (opens the original)
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A month ago, I wrote a post called “Why You’re Not Writing.” I wrote it in part to figure out why I’m not writing.Sure, I’ve been writing essays, substack posts, the usual scribbled diary entries—I’ve even tried my hand at a screenplay. But for the last five months, I haven’t been writing fiction.When I fretted about this to my partner for the nth time, he very gently said: “I haven’t seen you excited about a book in a long time. When you’re not reading anything you l
The Agent Spectrum, 7-13 (opens the original)
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Every time I write a draft of one of these posts, I pass it through a series of filters. The first filter: Is anyone going to be mad at me? (To date, no one’s gotten very mad at me for anything I’ve written on here, but the fear is always there.)The second filter: Is this actually useful to anyone?And the third filter, which sometimes I forget to run: Is this motivating, or am I just going to depress people?Last week, I wrote about literary
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