While reading the new Wyatt Mason book blog at Harper's, I found this gem of a conversation between Jonathan Franzen and literary thinker James Wood. Check it out:
"'[O]ne always imagines that New York is the place, or at least Brooklyn, where writers are continually bringing pots of sugar around to each other’s door and getting an egg in return and then talking about fiction,' [said Wood.] Franzen suggested that this hadn’t been his experience: 'I’ve spent three nights of my entire life in Brooklyn. They weren’t happy nights. [Audience laughter.] No offense to Brooklyn.'"
I totally disagree. I've written approximately 10,000 posts about how my writing community helped me. I've workshopped, commiserated and broken bread with at least ten different writers in Brooklyn, and it would be pretty silly to pretend that they didn't influence my writing.
Speaking of communities, novelist Joshua Henkin just wrote a great essay about how to reach out to book groups. Read it here:
"MATRIMONY is about a marriage (several marriages, really), and it takes on issues of infidelity, career choice, sickness and health, wealth and class, among other things. There is, in other words, a good deal of material for discussion, which is why my publisher, Pantheon/Vintage, has published a reading groups guide and why MATRIMONY has been marketed to book groups." (Thanks, Practicing Writer!)
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