Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2017 i The Writer

I imagine normal writers living in New England get the bulk of their writing done in the winter. It’s snowing and 11 degrees; what better excuse does one need to hunker down by the fire and write? But I confess I get my best writing done in the fleeting summer months, when I itch to get outside and work. I write by the ocean. I scribble by the grill. I lug notebooks to the park. I scratch out poems on ice-cream parlor napkins. I read, I write, I repeat. And I wouldn’t have my summers any other way. But many writers tell me they choose to take a sabbatical from June to August, which I certainly understand: Save the hours of pent-up computer time for the dark of January, and…

“At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making the propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin.” —From The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Submitted by Kathy Elbert. What makes this sentence great? What better compliment can I offer than this: Having read this sentence, I want to read the book. In my book The Glamour of Grammar, I argue that “z” is one of my favorite letters, maybe because it suffers the indignity of coming last, and I root for the under-letter. When the z starts a word, there is usually fun to be had: zoo, zany, zestful. Take care when it lurks in…

“DO YOU REGRET IT?” HE ASKS. I almost run the stop sign. From the backseat, the baby shrieks for more Cheerios, and my husband tries again. “I mean, of course you regret it. But how much? Like, on a scale of One to You-Want-to-Divorce-Me?” The kids? The move? The fact that I’m no longer in the classroom, shaping teenage minds and influencing our future? “Which thing?” I finally say. A horn beeps behind us. Cringing, I wave a sheepish apology and pull through the intersection. We’re totally lost, of course. We’ve been lost for months. Per usual, I am behind the wheel, and Al is in charge of navigation. This is mostly due to my complete lack of spatial intelligence, and also because it makes me nauseated to read things…

In some olympic sports, you can be considered over-the-hill by age 22. Luckily, this is hardly the case in most professions: I just turned 50 and feel in my prime as a book promoter and marketer. But books are more like Olympians: Once you get three months beyond the publication date, a book’s shelf life could be in danger. What can – or should – you do to market books that are aging in the eyes of bookstores, the media, and readers? Since I began working with authors nearly three decades ago, I’ve certainly witnessed many changes in how books are promoted, packaged, and sold. One such change is that a book’s window of “newness” – that valuable window of time when a book is seen as shiny and new…

Some writers’ conferences offer group dinners out on the town. Others urge participants to mingle over drinks and dancing. The Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, held biannually at the University of Dayton in Ohio, invites attendees to step up on stage and deliver their best punchlines at Stand-Up Comedy Night. “Our workshop is a supportive community of writers across the country who really appreciate Erma Bombeck’s legacy,” says conference founder Teri Rizvi, who attributes the popularity of the three-day event to the quality of the keynoters and faculty, plus the presence of the famed humor columnist’s family. “Her three children are always here,” Rizvi says, “and our attendees love being able to hobnob with them.” Workshop participants range from parenting bloggers who may have just started writing to published book authors.…

You can't find this in print. I awaken in the attic darkness, rubbing my shoulder, slow to remember where I am. My left arm burns with tiny hot jolts of electricity. Except I no longer have a left arm. As cruel jokes go, “phantom pain” is brilliantly engineered, proof that the same angry God that hurls heavy metal at you without warning also enjoys a good practical joke. The only possible upside of not having an arm is that it’s the one part of you that cannot be hurt; yet one’s nerves, blind to the havoc outside the body, continue to seek out the extremity via signal sending and when those signals don’t get where they’re going—smacking instead into a fleshy cauterized stump—the nerves respond with the hot jolt of…

The first quarter of 2016 was a writer’s dream: my debut novel had been sold; I’d started book publicity efforts; I was making a difference publishing new writers at the literary magazine I edit for; I had a solid idea for a second novel. And then my MFA program up and died. It doesn’t look like much on the surface, but I’d had this built-in community for more than six years, both from 2010 to 2013, when I was actively in class, and then as an alum from 2013 to 2016, while I was pitching my book and trying to write new material. It provided support and structure, and, perhaps most importantly, a cohort that would regularly remind me to work toward my writing goals. So when the MFA administration…

DESTINY. INTENTION. COINCIDENCE. AN ATOMIC COLLISION OF HARD WORK, TALENT, AND REWARD. CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT, but the career of Phoebe Robinson has whatever that is written all over it. In 2010, Robinson had recently entered the New York comedy circuit. And like most new comics, she hustled for any stage time she could get, paid or unpaid (mostly unpaid). It’s at one of those shows where I – who’d just taken a standup-class myself – met Robinson. After watching her set, I decided to interview her for a nowdefunct women’s website that I ran. (RIP, singlewomenrule.com.) At the time, the New York Times ran an article on the summer comedy series “Laughter in the Park,” produced by Suzette Simon’s nonprofit NY Laughs. The photo featured Robinson, one of…

Modern writers can’t be too proud to do all kinds of wordsmithing work if they hope to pay their bills each month. Essayist Catherine Newman got her first writing paycheck for crafting instructions in a parenting magazine. More than 20 years later, she’s got books to her name, a monthly column, and companies asking her for consulting. But she’s still looking for new opportunities around every corner. How does Newman make it work? “I’m not a snob about writing,” she says. “I don’t have any artistic notion of myself that’s being injured by writing work.” Writing is a job, one she’s thrilled to have, and she’s always viewed it as such. After 10 years writing a dissertation that virtually no one read, spreading her words out in the world and…

The full spread of The Wax Paper – a broadsheet on heavy newsprint – measures over 2 feet wide. While readers can access all of its writing and art online, editor Hans Hetrick urges people to subscribe to the print edition with its multiple columns of text and art and handdrawn borders. “The real joy of The Wax Paper is holding one of our big, beautiful issues in your hand,” he says. “When opened, it’s incredible how long the smell of ink stays with it. It’s is meant to be absorbed as a physical object.” Author and historian Studs Terkel inspired the title of the 2-year old publication with his inaugural radio show, titled The Wax Museum. “Studs Terkel’s voice and the voices he collected are a necessary antidote to…

Even though many don’t offer payment and some are more popular than others, literary journals are a great way to get your writing’s foot in an editor’s door. Some writers may overlook smaller publications in order to concentrate on bigger projects, but doing so could be a mistake. Whether you’re looking to apply to an MFA program or want to build your publishing portfolio, having your work appear in a literary magazine or journal can be a big first step toward your dream career. The magazines listed here are a sampling of what the industry has to offer. Find more at writermag.com. Information in this section is provided to The Writer by the individual markets and events; for more information, contact those entities directly. Subscribers to The Writer have online…

Olivia Laing Olivia Laing is a journalist, a former deputy books editor at The Observer, and the author of three books of nonfiction. Her first book, To The River, was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and documents a 42-mile journey she made along the river in which Virginia Woolf drowned. Her second book, The Trip to Echo Spring, examines the connection between writing and alcoholism and was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Gordon Burn Prize. Laing’s most recent book, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named as one of the best books of 2016 by a number of media outlets, including NPR, Publishers Weekly, and Newsweek. Her writing regularly appears in…

Essayist Elena Passarello steps away from the library podium in Corvallis, Oregon and begins to read her piece about Cher Ami, a carrier pigeon used by the U.S. Army Signal Corps to carry messages in France during World War I. A hundred audience members sit riveted by both Passarello’s fine dramatic reading style and by the information itself. Passarello had collected so many strange and surprising details about a little-known bird credited for saving 200 American soldiers – details that lent themselves perfectly to the essay form. Once referred to as the kiss of death for book sales unless you were, say, Anne Lamott or David Sedaris, the word “essay” now attracts the attention of agents and editors eager to showcase pithy meditations on everything from growing up American Thai…

It’s really very simple. You’ve decided you would like to take a writing workshop. Now you need to decide where to take it. Sure, you can probably find one nearby…or you can go someplace far away and incredibly beautiful. If you decide to opt for the latter option, these six workshops and retreats are excellent choices. Under the Volcano What: Under the Volcano is a 10-day, 14-year-old writing program that meets annually in January. “Intended for committed writers with projects underway, the program is open to poets, short story writers, novelists, journalists, librettists, memoirists, and essayists, as well as those working on projects that challenge traditional genre lines,” claims the retreat's website. Where: Tepoztlán, Mexico When: Jan. 11-21, 2018 Who: Founder and director Magda Bogin has taught writing at Columbia,…

Ken Pisani is a screenwriter, television writer, playwright, and the author of the highly praised graphic novel Colonus. He’s now adding “novelist” to his impressive list of accomplishments. Amp’d is the story of Aaron, who suffers the loss of his left arm after a car accident. Faced with adversity, Aaron tries to deal with the resulting challenges in his life. Pisani skillfully weaves together compelling and flawed characters, complicated family dynamics, and relatable feelings and struggles. With Amp’d, Pisani has created an engrossing and witty read that explores the human condition. He is adapting the book into a television series that is currently being developed. Inspiration It was the idea of overcoming adversity. I don’t innately believe that when bad things happen, you overcome it. I think those are the…