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Jul31
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 "You’re graduating. Rushing headlong into the unknown rest of your life. Your friends are drifting off in every direction. Some are going to college, some are going to work and some are going to their parents' basements to watch reality TV. As you see it, there are two options. Go to college and get ahead or take some time off and go traveling."
That's the opening of Heather McElhatton's choose-your-own adventure book for adults, Pretty Little Mistakes. You start your life over again at graduation, and you actually get a chance to choose where the book goes next. McElhatton is our special guest this week, sharing some writing wisdom. Test drive her novel here, and then read her advice for developing the lives of your own characters. Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing. Jason Boog: Each decision in Pretty Little Mistakes literally creates a whole new character. How did you turn these hundreds of different versions of you into fully fleshed-out characters? Any specific tips for painting stronger characters in our novels? Heather McElhatton:
Everyone works differently, but I need visuals. Continue reading...
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Jul30
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Like you, I juggle way too many jobs in the fight to keep writing and support myself. When I asked novelist Heather McElhatton (author of Pretty Little Mistakes) how she survived our frustrating lifestyle, she had a beautiful answer: "Single...
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In novelist Heather McElhatton's City Pages profile, the author grimly describes your life before publishing her first book: "35 years old, living with her mother, having just heard from her agent, 'Honey, there just isn't anywhere else to send it.'"If...
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Jul26
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Anybody can put video up on YouTube. Does that mean we doomed to watch America's Funniest Home Video one million times online, or will we ever see something new?That's up to the people who tell stories. One of my favorite...
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Jul25
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Can you imagine if we had chatroom transcripts of the beat poets hashing out their poetics with their fans and critics? Novelist Jeff VanderMeer--one of the patron saints of this site-- pointed out a fascinating set of links arranged by...
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The Mortal Kombat of writers is headed to New York tonight.This competitive literary test of reading and writing wits has already caused some problems in San Francisco, so it will be interesting to see how the whole thing goes down...
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Jul24
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Did YouTube kill the political star? Last night the first installment of the YouTube/CNN presidential debate was waged. I missed it, but Steve Bryant has provided me with a cornucopia of links and analysis. Check it out:"At one point Barack...
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I live in New York City and I love to tell stories. That means I've attended lots and lots of readings. I go to book parties and storytelling events the way some people go to bowling night. But last night...
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Jul23
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It's tough finding readers these days. Would you go find them at work?The SF Chronicle reports that new publicity companies are seeking readers at workplace readings for corporate audiences--staging brown bag lunch readings series or full-fledged presentations at work:"'At public...
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How do you write and sell books to a generation that supposedly doesn't care about books?Over at Soft Skull Press, Richard Nast is blogging about Page23, a MySpace blogged extension of the Changing Hands bookstore. They created the webpage to...
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Jul20
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Think you write a punchy sentence? Imagine your next sentence projected in gigantic letters on the side of the New York Public Library.That's the kind of writing that artist Jenny Holzer does, stark, gigantic, but brief manifestos that she projects...
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Is your novel entertaining?The insightful, anonymous Print-On-Demand Critic demands that novelists entertain the reader. He takes one of the most famous non-traditional books of all times, finding entertainment value in James Joyce's Ulysses. Love it or hate it, you should...
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Jul19
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These are gloomy days, between the war, the struggling economy, and our country's attempts to reckon with its place (and responsibilities) in this troubled world. Times like these call for hardboiled prose and hardboiled narrators. Last night I had a long...
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Who is saving the stories of your family members? Over at Memoirville, World War II vet Norman Bussel is writing a serialized account of his nightmarish experience as a POW. The first installment opens with a heartbreaking ode to storytelling:"Well, my...
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Jul18
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Half the battle of being a writer is locating the correct word for a particular context. There's a big difference between using a phrase like "that scrawny man" and "that lithe man," even though the words are essentially synonyms. Every...
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Should you go back to school for writing? Thousands of writers are asking themselves that while reading the The Atlantic Monthly's annual rankings of creative writing MFA programs. Before you go apply to all ten schools, you should really think long...
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Jul17
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Should you release your novel on your blog?Lots of people do it. Check out Na-No-Blog-Mo if you don't believe me, it has a sprawling list of bloggers who have published their novels for free. Blogs make publishing so easy--if you...
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Jul16
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Lots of blogs and magazines have been debating if Harry Potter has helped (by bringing millions of kids back to books) or hurt (by swamping the market with unfair standards for blockbuster books) the publishing industry. SF Signal has avoided...
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Do you like books to end with a bang, a whimper, or a punchline? Last year the American Book Review published a list of the 100 Best First Lines from novels. According to novelist and writing teacher Lance Olsen, they...
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Jul13
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Private detective writers of the world unite!There has never been a better time for hardboiled heroic narrators to guide us through our anxious world, and the 2007 Shamus Awards are celebrating the best private eye books of the year. Sarah...
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Where are we going? Last night I attended a conversation between one of my journalistic heroes, William T. Vollmann (a novelist/journalist who mixes vivid imagery with emotional close-ups of human suffering) and photographer Richard Drew (the photographer of the famous "falling...
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Jul12
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Three cheers for the creative classes!According to Michael Rosen more people are working as writers, musicians, and artists than ever before in the United States. This is good news for aspiring writers--people earning a living writing have increased 30 percent...
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Imagine a book club full of Dick-heads all studying the same book.That's right. A longtime fan of science fiction genius Philip K. Dick will be live-blogging his reading experience this summer. David Gill (founder of both the blog and the...
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Jul11
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Budd Par recently published his heavy vacation reading list. He confessed that his summer reading is anything but fluffy, since vacation is the only time he can dedicate to reading a big book straight through. His dilemma will seem familiar...
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Do we need a Facebook for bookworms? Book bloggers have always been an interactive bunch, but a few companies are trying out new ways of mixing book lovers via social networking technology.GalleyCat just explored this burgeoning field and come back with...
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Jul10
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You must love librarians. That's one of the prerequisite qualities of The Average Publishing Spot reader.How in the heck can you love books if you don't love the people who protect your books? Read about these hip librarians in the...
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We haven't followed a meme for months and months. Today I got tagged by Ed Champion, and I feel like playing along--a good meme helps you stretch your writing legs, meet new people and read new blogs.Here are the rules...
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Jul 9
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So you want to go to writing school, but you can't afford to leave your job and become a graduate student. In the past, only trust-fund kids could afford that kind of move.Not anymore.Erika Dreifus, the practicing writer guru (and...
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Have you ever clicked on the iMovie (or other free film-editing program) icon on your computer? Most writers haven't, but they should.The day is coming when the word "professional writer" will include a grocery list of abilities, including blog software...
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Jul 6
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Do you have a writing buddy? You aren't going to make it without one.This weekend I'm meeting up with an informal writing group, looking for a number of things: new editors, new friends, and somebody to commiserate with when things...
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'Write what you know.' That's what countless creative writing teachers told me as I struggled to write during my undergraduate years. Nowadays, as a new generation of web writers are cutting their teeth and looking for inspiration, maybe that advice...
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Jul 5
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Too many people treat YouTube like a playground full of idiots--too vast and stupid to merit attention. Writers won't take YouTube seriously until real writers show up on YouTube. Video pioneers like Robert Bruce are not alone anymore. The Continental...
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Are you inside or outside the "literary establishment?" Does it matter?The debate has raged on the web the last few weeks. Matthew Cheney recently criticized conspiracy theorists who feel like science fiction writers are excluded from the literary establishment generating...
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Jul 3
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Are citizen journalists replacing or helping professionals? You decide... Over at Editor & Publisher, Steve Outing is writing about how communities of citizen journalists can help newspapers survive the new media economy where reporting budgets are slashed to the bone....
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In a world crowded with short blog posts and the blink-of-an-eye news headlines, more writers are cutting their teeth on flash fiction. Flash fiction--short short stories that hardly break a thousand words apiece--has showed up in writing contests around the Internet....
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Jul 2
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What if a writer actually celebrated his fan's efforts to imagine new installments of his work? Karl Schroeder is urging his fans to share their role-playing game versions of his science fiction books. Check it out: "I'm consumed with...
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Science fiction writers are the first-responders of the web-based literary world.Long before any other genre discussed the Internet, computer culture, or any of the reality-changing digital shifts in our lives, science fiction authors were already exploring these ideas in novels....
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