Maggie Shipstead on Dealing with Mistakes in Writing
lithub.com – Sunday May 29, 2022
Maybe five years ago I read a novel in which a man drowns in a lake, and, a few minutes later, his body is found floating on the water’s surface.
If any of my writer friends are reading this, they’re probably groaning because they’ve heard me harp on this example before. What can I say? Sometimes I’m irritating and pedantic. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t make any sense for that body to float. If bodies were inherently buoyant, no one would ever drown. For that scenario to work, the man’s lungs would have filled with water, pulling him under and killing him, and then, almost immediately, something — the condition of death? — would have sent his body rocketing back up to the surface, where, despite being heavier now than before, he floated. No. Bodies float because gases of decomposition eventually lift them. The process takes time: at least a couple days even in relatively warm, shallow water, longer in colder, deeper water. Many bodies never surface at all. But the image of the floating body is pervasive in our culture and our entertainment (“We’ve got a floater,” says one TV cop to another), so familiar that a writer may skip directly from drowning to floating without stopping to think.
The one line that's missing from all the writing advice
bookriot.com – Tuesday May 24, 2022
I started writing as an adult in 2009. I’d scribbled many poems and “novels” as a child and teen, but I had a West Wing-based epiphany in my early 30s (it’s a long story) and started writing seriously then.
Alongside the joy of getting to know my characters and daydreaming a plot into existence, I also read a lot of books on the craft of writing. Studying, I could do. I know school isn’t for everyone, and that I benefit from a lot of white and neurotypical privilege, but I loved school. Looking back now, I think part of what I loved about it was the (mostly) reliable nature of it. I grew up in Belgium in the 1980s, and there was a lot of listening to teachers, making notes neatly in my exercise books, learning things by heart for tests and reciting them at the chalkboard. I was good at following rules, and I liked the fact that a certain kind of input meant a certain kind of mostly predictable output.
I knew, of course, that art is less predictable than that. It was also apparent early on as I started writing that I thought outside the box of what fiction, at least British and American fiction, requires to be considered publishable. But still, if pressed, I would have said that learning my craft and persevering would eventually result in publication. I knew that it might be a long road (five years, maybe!), but if I learned about how to submit to agents, I would eventually find my place in the publishing world.
Little magazines in Instagram era, a tete-a-tete with independent writer Subhankar Das
indiablooms.com – Monday May 23, 2022
Welcome to the world of little magazines, mimeo editors, outlaw poets, chapbooks and experimental writing. IBNS caught up with Subhankar Das, an independent writer, literary activist, poet, blogger, publisher and film producer, to answer some of the questions pertaining to the future of little magazines and small publications in the era of Instagram.
The Little Magazines movement is a world of its own where unknown writers, unpublished poets and unsung litterateurs and activists share their literary exertions and thoughts with well-knit think alike groups spread across the globe.
But how is this child of the mimeograph revolution of the 60s and 70s coping up with the ever-evolving digital universe where the rules of publication and the way we share information have vastly changed. Is digital revolution an existential threat to Little Magazines or will it bring boundless opportunities and unlock limitless creativity?
A Conversation About Music, Memory, and the Topographies of Writing
lithub.com – Saturday May 21, 2022
In November of 2019, just months before COVID hit, I met Mesha Maren in person at the Miami Book Festival, in what would turn out to be my last in-person event for a while. Both of us had debut novels out that year, and a few months prior to that meeting Mesha had interviewed me for the Chicago Review of Books. Having a debut novel when you aren’t friends with many writers or people in publishing can be daunting and lonely if you’re on tour, so I was delighted when Mesha reached out to meet up. While having dinner, I learned that Mesha had written a novel that took place on the border, and I don’t recall whether I shared that I was finishing what would become my story collection Valleyesque.
Agents are feeling the burnout too
thebookseller.com – Tuesday May 17, 2022
Recent reporting on ’industry-wide burnout’ focused on editors, but agents are struggling with equally unsustainable pressures.
When I first started operating as an agent, I remember complaining to a colleague about my lack of work. I sat on their couch, voicing my panic because I had zero list, no emails, no clients and no meetings. I said to them, how anxious it made me to have so much free time when I was building my list and how much I hated not being ferociously busy. And they gave me a pitying look and said gently, that there would come a day very soon when I would regret every single word I had just said.
Kathy Lette: ‘Older women buy most books so why won’t publishers give them what they want?’
inews.co.uk – Sunday May 15, 2022
The author, whose books have sold 573,275 physical copies in the UK since 1998 believes literature is failing to keep up with the phenomenon of women aging disgracefully
Older women are easily the biggest consumers of fiction. So why is it so hard for an internationally best-selling author to get novels about them published?
That’s the conundrum that Kathy Lette says she has faced. The author, who helped invent “chick lit”, has used an interview with i to reveal the hard time she has had getting publishers to accept fiction about menopausal women who are enjoying life.
“I’m struggling to get publishers interested in books that celebrate older women in a positive way,” she says. “They’re saying, ‘I don’t know if there’s a market for this.’
“If you’re not the hot, young new thing, they’re reluctant to think that you have an audience out there. But, of course, it’s older women who buy books.”
Is there a secret to writing a bestselling book?
smh.com.au – Friday May 13, 2022
How do I write thee? Let me count the ways … no, there are too many to count. Every writer has made their own journey, and no two are quite alike. So how can you possibly teach anyone how to write, say, a novel?
Despite the difficulties, there have probably never been so many writing courses and guides on offer, and people eager to take them up. Two of the latest books by Australian writers are perfect illustrations of how different writing advice can be. Both are eminently absorbing, encouraging and inspiring for the novice. In other ways, they are poles apart.
Don Winslow: The Complicated Ethics of Writing Violence in Fiction
time.com – Wednesday April 27, 2022
There are some hard ethical questions in the writing of crime fiction.
For me, the most difficult one is how to portray violence.
For one thing, should you depict it all?
And if so, how do you do it with some sense of morality?
I wrestle with this issue all the time. It’s a fine line to walk. On the one hand I don’t want to sanitize violence—I don’t like presenting murder as a parlor game, or worse, a video game in which there are no real consequences. On the other hand, I don’t want to cross that thin line into what might be called the pornography of violence, a means to merely titillate the worst angels of our nature.
The 25 best podcasts for writers
mashable.com – Monday April 25, 2022
Audio can be a bit of a contentious subject among written word lovers. But we're not here to re-litigate the age-old debate over whether listening to audiobooks counts as "reading" (it does, by the way).
Writing can be a lonely profession (or currently unpaid passion, until it can become your profession). But podcasts can bring listeners a sense of community no matter how isolated they are in their interests, both emotionally or geographically. As the illustrious history of famous literary circles goes to show, it often takes a village to produce the singular creative geniuses of an era.
So for established authors or amateur creative writers with big aspirations alike, there's a lot to be gained from the virtual book clubs and writer communities behind the podcasts listed below. Whether you're looking for guidance on the writing process, seeking to learn the fundamentals of great literature or about the publishing industry, or looking for muses to refill your well of inspiration, we've got you covered. From fiction to memoir, screenwriting to playwriting, and prose to poetry, there's an endless world of audio storytellers just waiting to fill your ears with the written word.
On Writing a Social Novel, Giving Clear Feedback, and Outlasting Doubt
lithub.com – Wednesday April 20, 2022
I met Melissa Chadburn in 2011, at the Tin House Writer’s Conference, where I taught her in workshop. You already know that I’m going to tell you that she was brilliant and kind and funny, even back then, so I’ll skip to the part where I get really stoned.
This happened on the final night, when the poet D.A. Powell (bless his soul) proffered me hits off a blunt the size of a drumstick. At some point, I passed along to Melissa the little secret I had been saving for just such an occasion: the Croatian publisher of my debut story collection (“My Life in Heavy Metal”) had—after much anguished consideration—come up with a title that would capture the essence of my work for her readers: Sexburger U.S.A.
Oh my god, did we laugh.
Over the next five years, Melissa did two things for which I am still grateful. First, she took to calling me as Sexburger. Second, she sent me various drafts of her novel for review, absorbing, in the process, some pretty blunt feedback.
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