Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2013 i The Writer

THE CHOICE TO LIVE AND WORK as a writer is a tricky one. When we’re on a successful jag, we crank it out with guts and gusto. When we’re not successful, what do we do? Keep writing anyway. Shutting down the writer’s mind is among the most undoable tasks. We try to turn it off, but it keeps us up at night, loses us in thought, strains our attention span for other activities. Usually, we are called to the profession from deep within. Sometimes we fall into gigs – read Amy Farnum’s Breakthrough story about identifying as a writer – and sometimes we are drawn to the field because we have a story that needs telling. Novelist Samhita Arni, interviewed here by Kavitha Rao, is fascinated by myths, which she…

Dana Spiotta Dana Spiotta is the author of three novels: Stone Arabia (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), Eat the Document (finalist for the National Book Award) and Lightning Field (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year). Her fiction often focuses on the tensions of leading a double life, and her protagonists include a fugitive radical activist fleeing her criminal past by moving to suburbia, a failed rock musician writing a fictitious autobiography documenting the career he wished he’d had, and a married woman continuing affairs with two other men. What’s the most important thing you’ve learned about writing? A writer once told me there is only one way to create: as if your life depends on it, which it does. How has this helped you…

Working as a freelance writer, you can easily feel isolated especially if you work from a home office. But you are not alone. In fact, you’ve never been so un-alone in history. Freelancers are a large community of regular tweeters who enjoy voicing successes and woes to the rest of the world. Check out the hashtags #freelance, #freelancer and #pitch, and you will find your people. †Smokin Wisdom† @SmokinWisdom Time to take a break from writing, and go bun up and play some games, to ease the mind. greatbong @greatbong Starting writing my “cricket-themed” movie pitch. Catherine Herzog @cbherzog Balancing redoing the new apartment, new job, & freelance writing. But just played an hour of video games. #selfcare #relaxation C. F. Villa @Cf_villa Freelance assigments done and a vanilla latte…

I fell into the writing profession in college because of my love of sports. I began working part-time in athletic media relations for a university, answering the phone, making copies and writing an occasional press release. The fast pace of the work, not to mention the courtside seat on press row, were exciting, but at the time, I never thought of writing as a necessary skill for my new career adventure. After graduation and a few exhausting years in media relations for a high-level football school, I took a gamble on an opportunity as a senior editor at a start-up Internet company focused on college athletics. The start-up went belly up in a short time, but the company picking up the pieces for my former employer’s clients hired me as…

You may think you know the profile of the freelance life: struggling to get published, always selling a story, always looking for opportunity, short on vacation time. And all of that can be true. Mostly. Also true is that the market is loaded with opportunity and obstacles, making the task of defining “the freelance life” rather difficult. Let’s say that a freelance writer is anybody creating original work, solicited or unsolicited, for pay or not, for an established outlet, be it print or digital. While writing for friends and family in your blog may lead to your discovery down the road, it’s hardly the surest path. Of course, that assumes there is an accepted way to become a freelance writer. But if that was ever the case, it isn’t anymore,…

For more than 10 years, Joan Potter taught a memoir writing workshop at the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. Housed in a former commuter railroad station, the center is an intimate, beautifully restored structure overlooking the Hudson River. As students discuss their work, they periodically hear the rumbling of the train, a metaphorical reminder of journeys inherent in their writing. In 2003, Vicki Addesso, Susan Hodara and Lori Toppel signed up for Potter’s class. They each had taken the workshop previously, but this was the first time they overlapped. As will happen in such situations, it became evident that the three respected one another’s work, and they all appreciated Potter. Over the years, the women stayed in touch. One afternoon in 2006, over lunch with Hodara in…

Television is all the rage in Ayodhya. Hundreds of us, print journalists, have scuttled from our desks, swapping typewriters for cameras and microphones, drawn by the irresistible lure of television. Television is the mouthpiece of the New Ayodhya. Ayodhya is booming, Ayodhya is shining. Images flash on screens in every household, speaking of progress and development. Ayodhya is poised to take the world by storm. Ram has become an intimate presence in our living rooms. His face, magnified a thousand times, blazes on our shiny new TVs. His voice booms through our newly constructed houses, echoing across our polished floors and gleaming walls, promising prosperity and enlightenment. It is raining today. Dozens of colourful plastic umbrellas unfurl, protesting the early onslaught of the monsoon. Journalists, out in full force, thoroughly…

To be completely honest with you: When it comes to Twitter, no one has the answer to what makes people follow you and keep following you. No one formula for success, no top tips. Once you’ve figured out the basics — interesting profile photo, retweet other people’s tweets, interact, use hashtags — the most you can do is be interesting. While no one can authoritatively show you how to get 100,000 followers – I mean it, don’t believe those guys who promise thousands of followers in a day – you can build a steady stream of followers over weeks, months and years by taking the following steps. 1. Follow and be followed. One of the quickest ways to build a Twitter following is to follow and interact with interesting people,…

INFORMATION in this section is provided to The Writer by the individual markets and events; for more information, contact those entities directly. C = Children’s F = Fiction N = Nonfiction O = Other P = Poetry $ = Offers payment WriterMag.com Subscribers to The Writer have online access to information on 3,000+ publishers, publications, conferences, contests and agents. Go to WriterMag.com and click on Market Directory. CONTESTS F AMERICAN FICTION SHORT STORY AWARD Seeks well-crafted, character-driven literary fiction in any genre. Approximately 20 short stories will be published in American Fiction Volume 13: The Best Unpublished Stories by Emerging Writers. Finalist judge is Michael White. Maximum 10,000 words per story. Submit online. Deadline: June 15, 2013. Entry fee: $16. Prizes: First place will receive $1,750. Second place $500. Third…

Last summer, I set aside work on a novel I had been writing. Inspiration wasn’t coming, so instead of obsessing about a lack of progress, I worked on other ideas that had accumulated along the way. In the middle of the summer, a screenwriting friend named Ryan questioned this method, asking me if I wouldn’t be better served “sticking to it” to produce something “true.” This was a good question and deserves consideration by all of us who call ourselves writers. Should we work on what comes to us at each moment in an organic way, or stick to one project in a determined way? I was being lazy about the novel, perhaps, but incredibly productive otherwise, feeding the brain machine so I could go back to the big project…

I’m meticulous about grammar in my manuscripts, but I’m casual in emails. I don’t always capitalize or use periods. I use the typical abbreviations. I think it comes across as friendly, but a writer I recently emailed blasted me for it. Doesn’t everyone go easy on the rules in email these days? IN THIS AGE OF DASHED-OFF EMAILS and quick texts, many people have a relaxed attitude about grammar in electronic correspondence. Still, your choices in writing make an impression, and it’s important to know whom you’re writing to and what impression you’re making. I have a brilliant friend who chooses not to use capitalizations in his email messages. I already know he’s brilliant, and I suspect this is a quirky stylistic choice. In casual exchanges, I don’t think twice…

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In his new book Literary Rogues: A Scandalous History of Wayward Authors, Andrew Shaffer writes that as an impressionable 15-year old, he discovered the novel Less Than Zero – with all its “sex, drugs, and bad attitude.” To the teenager, Bret Easton Ellis was, in a word, cool. Years later, Shaffer wondered: Whatever happened to the literary bad boys and girls of yesteryear? Why are writers today so tame in comparison? These questions were the impetus behind this well-researched book. He combed literary history for writers as famous for their misbehavior as for their talent and collated their drugs of choice: laudanum (opium), absinthe, alcohol, Benzedrine, morphine, heroin, LSD, mescaline, cocaine and always sex. Scoundrels include Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), whose fragmented poem “Kubla Khan” has long been attributed to…

Any published writer will tell you that there’s nothing like the thrill of your first byline. Whether it’s a blog post, a short piece in a favorite magazine or a piece for a local publication, seeing your name in print or pixels makes for a happy day for any writer. Your byline identifies you as the author of the work and helps you create a name for yourself. So why would any writer ditch a byline to write with no acknowledgment – and let someone else take all the credit? Successful ghostwriters have a slew of answers to that question. Before we examine their experiences, let’s debunk some common ghosting myths – and then discuss how to “disappear” as a writer. MYTH #1 GHOSTS ARE NEVER GIVEN CREDIT. Not necessarily.…

LORI TOPPEL: Las Nereidas We strolled through the archway and into the schoolyard, where a row of folding chairs had been set up under the shade of the flamboyan tree and in front of the balance beam. Drinks waited on the picnic tables inside the shack, and my mother and the nursery teacher chattered away while arranging the cupcakes on the tables. I stood in the door way, staring at the balance beam. Next to it, a metal chair held a phonograph, and the teacher lowered the needle on the record. The first girl began walking on the beam. Then the second girl; perhaps she was giggling. And then I was up. The beam seemed extremely narrow before I even touched it, as if overnight someone had cut its width…

Pull up a chair and roll the dice. Whether low-or high-tech, games provide a dynamic pathway for connecting us to people, places and ideas – all of which are important to a writer’s craft. When we gather to play a game, we open doors to having fun with others while also developing imagination, enhancing creativity, flexing problem-solving muscles and nurturing well being. “For writers who sometimes feel so pressed to create, playing games relaxes us, opens us to a rich set of images and gives imagination permission and freedom to [let go],” says Bernie DeKoven, a fun theorist, game designer and author of The Well-Played Game. “When you are playing by yourself or with other people you’re at your best. Engaged and excited, you’re feeling good about yourself and the…

Attracting more than 150,000 attendees each year, The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books reflects the size of the book industry itself. It’s big. Really big. “The spirit of the event is one of community and celebration,” said Maret Orliss, senior programming manager of The Los Angeles Times Events and Strategic Partnerships. “People from all ages and walks of life finding a common ground through the power of the written word.” The event, which takes place April 20-21, is one of the largest and most prestigious book festivals in the U.S. Since its founding in 1996, book lovers of all ages and tastes have flocked to the University of Southern California campus to be in the same sunny spot as their favorite authors. Although the weekend activities are free and…

In 2004, Karen Thompson Walker read that the big earthquake in Indonesia shortened the earth’s rotation by a few microseconds. This news story inspired what became The Age of Miracles, her bestselling first novel, although with one major difference: Julia, an 11-year-old girl, and her parents face the effect of the earth’s slowing rotation and the lengthening of its days. That change makes for a haunting coming-of-age tale that landed Miracles on several best-of-the-year lists. Walker attended Columbia University’s MFA program and has worked in journalism and book publishing. She wrote part of the novel on the subway en route to her day job. Originally from San Diego, she now lives with her husband in Iowa City, Iowa. Why: Writing has become for me a type of meditation, that hour…

Are you editing your work as carefully as possible before submitting it to editors? Following a handful of easy tips can nudge you toward stronger “pre” editor professionalism – with the added benefit of making your copy cleaner and your prose sharper. 1 Avoid cliches such as “down to the wire,” “go the extra mile” or “at the end of the day.” Ferret out overused expressions by doing a careful line read of each sentence. Then do an even more careful word read, looking at each word for its power and accuracy. 2 Watch for unintentional repetition. If a word or phrase pops up more than once, search your document to see how many times it actually appears. The careful word edit mentioned above is useful here, too. 3 Avoid…

Writers are multitaskers by nature. We write while we watch TV. We write while we raise our kids and ride the bus. We write in our heads while we’re doing just about everything else. The Writer asked our Facebook followers if they might like to do the ultimate multitasking feat: Write while running on a treadmill. We were entertained by many of the responses – especially from the woman who already owns a treadmill desk. (Writers are the best!) We found the following responses entertaining, too.…

Russell Banks is the author of 13 novels and four short-story collections. Two of his novels, Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter, were made into movies. His work tends to stark realism, drawn from his own working class background, with hope in the midst of desolation. His range is wide, covering private as well as social ills, the latter especially in his most current novel, Lost Memory of Skin. Banks is a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee. He’s a member of the International Parliament of Writers and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 1. Besides talent, what are a few qualities that all serious writers should have? A writer’s got to have a passionate and almost sensual affection for language, and by the same token, a passionate, almost sensual affection for…

Andrew Shaffer, who wrote the parody Fifty Shames of Earl Grey under the pen name Fanny Merkin, also reviews romance, erotica and women’s fiction for RT Book Reviews magazine and has been published in The Huffington Post, Mental Floss and Maxim. While he doesn’t like Fifty Shades of Grey, he does like romantic and erotic fiction, as well as parodies. He offers these insights to writers. “You have to have some kind of love or interest in what you are parodying if you want to be successful, which is to be funny and not just cruel. What I wanted to do was have it be a celebration of the genre although it was poking fun at specific things in the book.” “There is a cruelty that goes along with parodies…

The list, by writer Scott Laming, was originally published at AbeBooks.com, an online marketplace for new, used, rare and out-of-print books. The Curse of Yig ZEALIA BISHOP Ghosted by H.P. Lovecraft Lovecraft did a large amount of ghostwriting for various patrons, including Under the Pyramids (also known as Imprisoned With the Pharaohs) for Harry Houdini. Daughter of the Tejas OPHELIA RAY Ghosted by Larry McMurtry McMurtry was a frequent ghostwriter in his early career before winning Pulitzer and Academy awards. Tennis As I Play It MAURICE MCLOUGHLIN Ghosted by Sinclair Lewis Lewis wrote this book for McLoughlin 15 years before winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Old-Soldier Sahib FRANK RICHARDS Ghosted by Robert Graves War poet Graves wrote the forward for Richards but it’s also believed he wrote the entire…

HOW DO YOU MAKE ANCIENT MYTHS RELEVANT TO THE MODERN READER? Indian author Samhita Arni has spent most of her writing career figuring this out. The 28-year-old writer has written three books about mythology, but her updated versions of the myths are subversive and often provocative. She began writing her first book, The Mahabharata: A Child’s View, about the Hindu religious epic when she was barely 8; it was published when she was 12. Her second book, the graphic novel Sita’s Ramayana, written with artist Moyna Chitrakar and featured on these pages, was a quasi-feminist retelling of another Hindu epic, the Ramayana. It rose to No. 7 on The New York Times graphic novels bestseller list. Her latest offering, The Missing Queen, retells the Ramayana as an intricate noirish thriller.…

Interviewing is a high art. Whether a series of questions conducted for a primetime television show, the probing of characters by a fiction writer or the one-chance question shouted at a public figure, the results can make or break the final product. Yet, writers often fear the act of interviewing. It is the moment when you emerge from your privacy and takes a more public stage as a performer yourself. As in theater, the more prepared the actor, the better the performance. The following steps can increase your chances of conducting a strong interview and delivering a stellar final product. First, gather as much information about the source, expert or personality as possible. Look at his or her background on LinkedIn, view Twitter feeds and read Facebook postings. Search for…

New media is changing the tone of university writing programs, journalistic debates and literary publications around the world. Magazines and journals have embraced the digital age, putting pieces online to offer readers round-the-clock access and venues for community discussion in which writers and editors often take part. Three years ago, a group of feminist scholars gathered at the University of Oregon to talk about new media, gender and technology. The initial meeting inspired national conferences with academically like-minded people hoping to “smash open the black box of publication” and put their research online where all readers would have access and the opportunity to participate in public discourse. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology, debuted in November 2012, was born in that meeting. The inaugural issue, Conversations Across…