Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

"[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 rhythm or something, but it's those dreamers from elsewhere, the striving poets and wannabe circus performers and so forth, who power it with enough heat and light to dwarf the consolidated Edison company..."

That’s one of Ed Park's characters paraphrasing a famous line from E.B. White.

Park's new book, Personal Days, explores how that idealism gets wrecked on the shoals of Manhattan office culture. In addition to his fictional work, Ed Park is a founding editor at The Believer and literary blogger over at The Dizzies.

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 conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
At the end of your book, you meditate on all the millions of pages of lost, dull prose produced by people in offices every year. When you worked in an office environment, how did you manage to stay creative and productive in your writing? Any advice for writers who feel dulled by their day-jobs? 

Ed Park:
Discipline will take you a long way—if you set aside time every day to write, you will find something to write, even if you don’t know what you’re doing as you approach the desk. Continue reading...

It’s too easy not to write. One other bit of advice, which I need to take myself, is to get offline as much as possible.   

Jason Boog:
You are one of the biggest writing multi-taskers I know--writing, editing and working on a truly crazy amount of projects. How do you keep it all straight? Any advice for keeping your writing life balanced?

Ed Park:
It’s imbalanced—maybe that explains “The Dizzies”— the title of my blog, which I snagged from a novel project pre-dating Personal Days. The Dizzies is about people with vertigo. A cautionary tale.

Jason Boog: 
In addition to your novel-writing, you also work as an editor at a few of my favorite publications. What's your advice for the freelance writers in the audience who want to pitch an editor? What are you looking for in a magazine pitch?

Ed Park:
Be succinct, be interesting; know the sorts of things the periodical publishes; check to see if the periodical has run a story similar to yours in the recent past.

Follow these links for the rest of our Ed Park interview:

Fine Art of Blow-the-Top-Off-Your-Head Writing

How To Write Books-Inside-of-Books