Is the Agent Wrong or Do You Need a Style Check? Or Both? with Jessica Bird, Kathleen Flynn, and Andrea Meyer

We hear from two writers today: The first received some not-so-helpful feedback from a single agent about the “strength of her writing.” So is the agent just wrong or is there something there? Most likely it’s the first, but if you’re worried about your writing style, we’ve got some pointers. The second finds her writing “boring.” What to do? We’ve got writers Jessica Bird, Kathleen Flynn, and Andrea Meyer to help us out.

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Jessica Bird is a scholarship graduate of GrubStreet’s competitive Novel Incubator program, a past scholarship resident at Salty Quill Writers’ Retreat for Women, and was a finalist for the 2023 Edith Wharton Writers in Residence Program; she’s currently at work remapping her manuscript The Only Brother, the story of a man searching to discover why his older brother, presumed dead, survived his abduction when they were children but never returned to their family.

Kathleen Flynn is a classical singer, educator at Berklee College of Music and Tufts University, and an alumna of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program. 

Andrea Meyer is the author of Room for Love, a romcom based on an article she wrote for the NY Post, for which she pretended to look for a roommate as a ploy to meet men, and she’s currently querying Manny, a literary romp about a Cambridge “manny” and the women who throw his life into chaos.

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

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