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Jun30
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I'm taking it easy this week, savoring a little time off at work and bowing to the inevitable summer traffic drop. I thought it might be a good time to test-drive a new feature. Welcome to Dueling Comments, where I print my favorite comments that I've spotted in publishing blogs. There are some smart people lurking in the comments sections of blogs, so I'm scrounging around the Internets to find the crazy, the useful, and the crazy-useful wisdom that they leave behind. Over at Gawker, Special K weighed in with these smart thoughts about blogging authors--something all fledgling writers and aspiring bloggers should take to heart. Check it out: "some bloggers can't write coherently beyond an 800-word limit ... and, like writers-workshop dropouts, also make the mistake that general-audience readers give a flying fuck about their oh-so-unique personal experiences. But there's also this... good blogs tend to be funny, witty, snarky. And not ony is it hard to be funny, witty, snarky for extended periods of time, it can actually be hard to read -- well, snarky at any rate -- for extended periods of time." On the other side of the coin, Jungle--purportedly a publishing insider--explains why they advise many writers not to blog.
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Jun27
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Feeling overwhelmed? Watching your writing free time get swallowed by life commitments? I have three bits of advice from working writers, just for you...First of all, one of our favorite bloggers, Yen Cheong, is profiled in GalleyCat today. Here's her...
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Jun26
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I've been digging through the late George Carlin's vast trail of comedy clips all week, and I'll tell you what--that guy can teach you more about storytelling than an MFA program. So I was happy to uncover this final interview...
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"I've been stuck in the elevator, suspended in utter coffin blackness somewhere between the third and fourth floors—listening to the cables quiver, and every so often hearing the distant shouts of emergency workers saying, Hang in there buddy! or what...
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Jun25
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"[I was] thinking about that E.B. White passage you once showed me ... the swooning bit where he says that it's the native New Yorkers who give the city its stability, and the commuters who give it a daily tidal...
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Jun24
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"Yes, I Drank the Kool-Aid--and I Went Back for Seconds""Three Easy Rules for Impressing the Powers That Be (and Maybe Becoming One Yourself, A Simpleton's Guide)" "The Pegasus Plan: How to Get the Job You Want, the Respect You Deserve,...
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Are you afraid to revise mercilessly? These are tough words for any writer to hear: "The agent was intrigued, but to his disappointment, he found the 195,000 word manuscript bloated and self-indulgent."If you've heard something similar about your book, you...
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Jun23
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"I've been stuck in the elevator, suspended in utter coffin blackness somewhere between the third and fourth floors—listening to the cables quiver, and every so often hearing the distant shouts of emergency workers saying, Hang in there buddy! or what...
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Jun20
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“The cold-war era was a very special time to be a child. We were appreciated. World leaders hell-bent on universal destruction might be accumulating nuclear armaments like the lucky winners of a Nickelodeon-sponsored Toys 'R Us shopping spree, but even...
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Jun19
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“The American voice of the sixties I most identified with turned out to be less Ken Kesey and more Philip Roth. I didn't want to take peyote and have visions in the desert; I wanted to marry a nice psychoanalyst...
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Ever since I saw my first stack of romance paperbacks at a garage sale as an impressionable Midwestern kid, I've always wanted to know who in the heck made them. Today, Barnes & Noble showed me. Romance and fantasy illustrator...
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Jun18
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"Ah yes, the noise-canceling headphones. You could lock Rush Limbaugh, Phyllis Schlafly and Mullah Omar in a room together with a stack of Hustlers and 10 ounces of meth, and they couldn't come up with anything more misogynist. I storm...
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Need some writing music? I can't tell you how many pages I've written while listening to Calexico. This band sounds like the end of a pulp fiction novel, when the ruined hero trudges off to Mexico--maybe to escape, or maybe...
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Jun17
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That's a web video of Rachel Shukert's reading from her new memoir, Have You No Shame? As you can see, her work literally jumps off the page. We can learn a lot by watching her read, and finding out how her...
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Jun16
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How does nature affect your storytelling style? Edward Champion explores that topic over at Barnes & Noble Review--a brand-new, action-packed place for literary essays. He's writing about Daughters of the North, the latest work by Publishing Spot alum, Sarah Hall.Champion...
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"In fact, I believe teenage boys lying to their friends about blow jobs are pictured in the magnificent hieroglyphs excavated at Abydos dating back from the Naqada IIIa period of the thirty-third century B.C." That's author Rachel Shukert writing an...
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Jun13
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Writing is a scary field--it requires lots of work with little rewards, it's tough to break in, and worst of all, there isn't an ounce of job security. Despite all these risks, author Donald Ray Pollock left his solid job...
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Jun12
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Can a series of web videos help a bestselling author? Over at Reel Pop, Steve Bryant takes a look at a series of web videos that serve as book trailers for the new Robin Cook thriller. Here's his original review,...
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"It was 1 o’clock in the morning on a rainy Sunday, and Sharon was sitting at the kitchen table debating whether or not to stuff another slice of American cheese into her mouth when Aunt Joan called.” That's an opening line...
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Jun11
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The Internet has ruined my revision skills. First of all, the pace of the web makes me rush and make mizdakes in spelling and gramma. Even worse, when I go sit at the writing desk and work on my novel,...
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Jun10
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"Standing in his underwear in front of the faded pink duplex that he and Geraldine rented, Del came out of a blackout while taking a leak in the dead August grass."You don't meet characters like that everyday, but short story...
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My buddy Ian Daly showed me this video of novelist Henry Miller cursing up a storm about New York City. I love this place (and so did Miller) but it's great to watch one of my writing heroes get upset...
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Jun 9
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Some writers think MFA's are artsy-craftsy factories while others see writing school as a ticket out of their day-job routine. Our special guest this week is Donald Ray Pollock, one of the most inspiring examples for part-time writers looking for...
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Jun 6
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How were you born?I was supposed to be born in June, but I showed up kicking and screaming in April--weighing in at four pounds. This explains my skinniness and my bad sense of timing.Over at LitPark, readers are sharing their...
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What will you be reading this winter? I know what I'm reading already... Roberto Bolaño's huge novel 2666 is finally coming out in English--all 1,000+ pages of it. It meditates on fictional version of a series of unsolved murders in Mexico,...
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I've been writing agent pitches all week, and I'll tell you what--pitching is a writing form (just like a sonnet or a novella), and I am terrible at it.Today I found two more resources for learning this mysterious art. First...
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Jun 5
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How long should it take you to write your book? Last week DeLauné Michel explained how she wrote whenever her children let her. Today, we have a writer who crams in all the writing at the end of his process.True...
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Jun 4
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In high school, I fancied myself the trippy beatnik 21st-Century version of James Joyce who would write The Great American Private Detective Epic Poem. I filled up endless notebooks with crazy stories that still make me giggle, but I learned...
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Jun 3
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As news of Hillary Rodham Clinton's impending concession filters through the Internets today, I think all webby journalists should be thinking about one person. Mayhill Fowler."Who?" you may ask. This 61-year-old citizen journalist has followed the campaign all season for...
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Jun 2
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What if books had more than one ending? How could you create enough characters to sustain that kind of plot? If you are looking for ways to make an interactive book--online or on paper--you can learn a lot from novelist...
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Do you realize how much your reading habits have changed? Every day, I read a stack of newspapers and navigate through the work of at least five different writers, all without leaving my computer. We have this incredible interactive technology...
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