Oct. 30, 2009
Gift ideas for your favorite writer (or for yourself!)
I know, it's only Halloween, but the holidays are rolling up quickly and if you have a writer on your gift list, you might want to browse the Persephone Books Web site for the perfect book-gift.

Persephone Books reprints what it calls "neglected classics" written in the 20th century—mostly by women. The books include novels, short stories, diaries and cookbooks by authors such as Frances Hodgson Burnett, Noel Streatfeild and Judith Viorst, among others. These are the kinds of books you'd find in a serious reader's home library; all are beautifully bound in dove-grey jackets with unique endpapers that look like a rich fabric or wallpaper. (They even come with a bookmark that matches the endpaper. How's that for classy?)

Persephone's Web site offers a detailed description of each of the 86 books in its catalog. Each book description includes a synopsis of the plot, a glimpse of the endpaper, and a photo or drawing of the author or book subject.

Considering that Persephone Books is located in London, the cost for a book and shipping is very reasonable: £10 ($16.54) for the book, plus shipping for £4-£6 (another $6.62-$9.94). Gift-wrapping is available, too. For those fans of "fruit-of-the-month"-type gifts, Persephone also offers six- and twelve-month book subscriptions at a discounted price. One bonus over the usual fruit-of-the-month club? You can choose which books appear in the recipient's mailbox!

Need some other gift ideas? Take a look at our December issue! Ligaya Figueras offers several fun options in her article, "Cheer your writer friends with these holiday stocking stuffers" in the Take Note department.

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Oct. 29, 2009
New literary magazine embraces technology
While many literary journals are migrating to the Web and adding blogs and even podcasts, one journal is embracing technology—and its effect on our reading habits—to a much greater degree. In fact, you can choose to read Electric Literature's five stories per issue on your computer, Kindle or iPhone—or in good old-fashioned print. For the tactile pleasure of turning sheaves of paper, though, you'll have to pay twice as much as those who elect to read the magazine digitally.

The editors, Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum, who met in Brooklyn College's MFA program, take advantage of print-on-demand (POD) technology to only print copies as they're ordered. POD and digital versions add up to cost savings, say the editors, which allows them to pay their writers (including Lydia Davis, Colson Whitehead and Michael Cunningham) $1,000 per story—very generous, especially when most literary magazines can afford to pay contributors only in copies.

The New York Times recently reported that Electric Literature is working on audiobook versions of its issues and that Rick Moody will write a story as a series of tweets for the journal. The editors also commissioned videos inspired by some of their stories. Check out the gorgeous animation in this trailer for Jim Shepard's "Your Fate Hurtles Down at You":

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Oct. 28, 2009
More acclaim for Kim Barnes
Just as we got our December issue out the door to the printer came word that our How I Write subject for that month, Kim Barnes, had just won a prestigious honor for her novel A Country Called Home (Knopf).

PEN USA, the West Coast center for the renowned writers organization International PEN, awarded Barnes the fiction prize in its 2009 Literary Awards competition. The competition honors outstanding work by writers in 10 genres.

Barnes is a versatile writer, with two memoirs, two novels, and a whole bunch of critical praise to her credit. Her debut book, the memoir In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Both Publishers Weekly and Booklist gave A Country Called Home a starred review and the book was included in three "best of 2008" roundups by three big newspapers.

PW described the novel thus: "A newly married couple abandon the comfort of upper-class Connecticut and stake their claim in 1960s Fife, Idaho, in Pulitzer-finalist Barnes's exquisite novel. … Barnes's descriptions of the rugged landscape are vivid, and the characters' sadness and desires are revealed with wrenching detail."

We put another accomplished writer to work interviewing Barnes for our article—Buddy Levy, an Idaho-based author, journalist and instructor. We think you'll find Barnes' observations quite interesting. The December issue is due out in just a couple weeks.

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Oct. 27, 2009
Mac-anized
My home laptop died last week, after weeks of slowing down and almost daily "blue screens of death." The computer, a Dell Inspiron, lasted about eight years, and given the phenomenal changes in performance and technology since 2001, that Dell had a very good run. I can't complain. Unfortunately, the last backup I performed was in March, so I lost seven months of photos and documents—some of which I was able to recover from e-mails I sent and from sites such as Flickr, where I posted some of the photos. (My writing is all done with pen and paper first, so that was also retrievable.) But the rest was lost forever. Let this be a lesson to all writers out there: Back up your files often!

So an emergency purchase was in order to get me back online. We use Macs at work, which I love for ease of use, but I always assumed I'd have a PC at home. Mobility is important, since I don't have a fixed spot at home for a desktop, so I went out looking for another laptop. As luck would have it, Windows 7 was just released, and so there were a number of new computers to look at. And yet I ended up with ... a new iMac. It's light enough to move around (and it's in one piece, apart from the wireless—and cordless—mouse and keyboard). It's more powerful than the best laptop I saw, and the screen is bigger too. There is less to worry about regarding viruses. It's completely silent (no annoying fan noise), it's easy to use—and it took about 3 minutes to set up. I'm a convert.

Macintosh reportedly has about a 14 percent market share and is especially popular with artists and graphic designers. But do writers favor Mac as well? Let us know what you think in our forums, available at the link below.

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Oct. 23, 2009
Writing is no laughing matter ... ?
Another workweek is drawing to a close and, as usual, I can't imagine writing or doing anything that requires fresh brain cells on Friday night because I have no creativity left. That got me thinking about how writing is a serious business. There's nothing funny about writing, even when you're writing humor. It's plain hard work.

Humorist-extraordinaire Dave Barry told The Writer in a 2003 interview that "good writing is almost always hard, and what I think sometimes happens is that writers forget how hard it is, or don't want to do the work anymore, and they call this 'writer's block.'"

Barry, whose humor column was syndicated in more than 500 newspapers around the world, won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988. Although he took an indefinite leave from column-writing in 2004, he is still busy writing. He co-wrote his most recent book, Peter and the Sword of Mercy with Ridley Pearson (fourth in a series of children's fantasy books); his next book of humorous essays, I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Adventures in Adulthood will be out next spring.

After a busy workweek, we could all use some laughter in our lives. So on this gloomy, rainy, cold Friday afternoon (here in Wisconsin, at least), I think it's time to read some Dave Barry columns; relax; laugh; and let the brain cells (and creativity) re-generate!

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Oct. 22, 2009
Does the couple that writes together stay together?
It might seem romantic to be part of a writing couple. You can swap work and give each other feedback, commiserate over rejections, and more generally share your love for language. Then again, it might sound like a nightmare. If you're full-time writers working from home, what could be worse than being cooped up in the same place trying to concentrate after a miserable fight the night before? In terms of your careers, would you have a friendly competition, or is that an oxymoron?

Maybe a romantic partnership between writers is part dream, part nightmare—or simply something in between. In a recent Off the Shelf essay published in the Los Angeles Times, Joanna Smith Rakoff, author of A Fortunate Age, reflects on her marriage to poet Evan Smith Rakoff. She says the high points of her relationship are "when we're both happily productive, furiously typing in our tiny offices at either side of the apartment, or when one is writing so well that the other becomes productive almost by osmosis."

Her thoughtful piece, which goes into the sensitive issue of money (sensitive for couples and writers alike!), is worth reading in full. "I have sometimes wondered—particularly now that we have two children—if having more money, and earning it in a way that has nothing to do with writing, wouldn't actually allow us more freedom as writers," she says.

And on a lighter note, take this fun writing couples quiz to match up 10 novelists to their writer spouses.

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Oct. 21, 2009
Clear-eyed advice from Malcolm Gladwell
Here's some food for thought from one of The New Yorker's star writers, Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers. He's become famous for his ability to spot fresh stories for lay readers in the social sciences and put his unique spin on them. A Time magazine interviewer asked Gladwell in the Oct. 20th issue what single bit of advice he might offer to young journalists. His answer:

The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say.

He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master's in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that's the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

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Oct. 19, 2009
Nora Roberts; book wars
The Toronto Star published a quick but interesting interview with Nora Roberts that's full of interesting tidbits. For example, did you know she first wrote in 1979 when she was trapped at home in a snowstorm? She picked up paper and pen and started writing to stay sane. Did you know she fell in love and married a carpenter she'd hired to build some bookshelves? They've been together now for 24 years.

According to the Star, Roberts grosses $60 million a year writing romance and crime novels. (Yes, let's all dream for a moment!) Last year, she sold an amazing 18 million books in the U.S. and Canada under her name (romance) and J.D. Robb (crime).

A couple quotes from the interview:

On solitude: "I like being alone with myself. I like having time to think of my story lines and develop my characters. It's hard to do that if somebody's talking to you. They should go away and leave me alone."

On her favorite book: "I'm going to have to say it's a toss-up. Between To Kill a Mockingbird, which I think probably is the perfect book, as close to perfect as any book can be, and Catch-22 because it's just brilliant.

• • •
Walmart and Amazon are duking it out in an unprecedented book price war, offering some holiday-season hardcovers for as low as $8.99—as much as 75 percent off the cover price. This has some publishers and analysts concerned that such deep price-cutting will hurt the industry in some fundamental ways.

David Gernet, John Grisham's literary agent, tells The New York Times: "If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over. If you can buy Stephen King's new novel or John Grisham's Ford County for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first novel for $25? I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted bestsellers take the consumer's attention away from emerging writers."

Booksellers are concerned as well. Daniel Goldin, owner of Milwaukee's Boswell Book Co., writes in his blog Boswell and Books: "The whole thing reminds me of the drug trade somehow, and I feel like some Joe caught in a shootout. I'm currently hiding in an alley down the block, but with all those flying bullets, I'm getting a little nervous."

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Oct. 15, 2009
Grammar and editing resources
Writers don't just write; they do a lot of editing, too. Besides revising their own work, a lot of writers edit the work of others. With that in mind, here are a few great resources for editing for grammar and style:

Copyediting newsletter: This bimonthly publication aimed at copy editors, writers and others working with language is edited by Wendalyn Nichols, who has worked as a freelance writer and editor, lexicographer and editorial director of Random House Reference. Find language-use articles, answers to tricky grammar questions as well as fun editing-related cartoons by Sage Stossel of The Atlantic Online. On Copyediting's Web site, access a blog, podcasts and job postings. Copyediting also offers workshops, audio conferences and online tutorials.

Watch Your Language: Bonnie Trenga, author of The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier: How to Solve the Mysteries of Weak Writing, tackles common grammar problems in her twice-monthly online column for The Writer. In today's column, she talks about why you don't want your sentences to be too long (as in the example from Ron's blog from yesterday)—and why too many sentence fragments are equally troubling.

Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English: The third edition of Patricia T. O'Conner's must-have book came out last month. This version includes new chapters on spelling and pronunciation.

Also check out The New York Times Newsroom Navigator for links to numerous online resources, the International Trademark Association's Trademark Checklist for a list of trademarked words, and Common Errors in English Usage compiled by Paul Brians.

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Oct. 14, 2009
The sentence that would not end
Well, the last time Thanksgiving approached with its promise of full tummies, I remember encountering what I felt was an egregious example of overstuffed dashes-i.e., way too much material stuffed between the dashes in a sentence. It was unreadable and forced the reader to play hopscotch back to the beginning of the sentence. In the new Vanity Fair, I stumbled badly over another sentence that has way too much stuffing.

It appears in an otherwise interesting, well-written article by Michael Wolff, a two-time National Magazine Award winner and a Vanity Fair columnist. In the article, headlined "Rupert to Internet: It's War!," he describes how media mogul Rupert Murdoch is "bent on making readers actually pay for online newspaper journalism … " (Now there's a concept.)

Following is the relevant passage. The problem area is the second paragraph.

It is difficult not to sound catty when discussing [Murdoch's] News Corporation's adventures with the Internet. But the litany of its failures—even more extreme than those of most other media companies that have struggled unsuccessfully online—is, I think, relevant to understanding exactly what Murdoch might really be trying to do.

From the failure of Delphi, one of the first public-access Internet providers, in 1993, to iGuide, the precursor to Yahoo and Google, which closed within months of its launch, to his son James's aborted Internet-investing spree in the late 90s, to the great promise of MySpace, which was shortly flattened by Facebook, to the second launch of Pagesix.com, which Murdoch closed this year, after four months of operation, Murdoch's Internet starts and stops have engendered at News Corp., in the description of Peter Bale, who once ran the Web site of The Times of London and now runs MSN in the U.K., a relative "fear or abhorrence of technology."

That latter graf—which is actually one run-on sentence—is 109 words long and filled with asides that badly slow it down and delay—and delay—its meaning. Perhaps more importantly, it's what I call a back-loaded sentence, not signaling its basic point until the end. There's a place for such sentences, of course, but they can also exhaust and confuse the poor reader if badly done. In this case, Mr. Wolff was, I think, ill-served by his editors at the normally well-edited magazine who let this one through. (And yes, editors at The Writer make mistakes, too. Please, please, don't ask me about the wrong year I once put in the table of contents. Thank you.)

There seems to be a simple solution here, beyond putting the sentence out of its misery. In this instance, the reader loses nothing and gains a lot if we signal the point of the graf at the start, then follow with the examples. Something like this:

Indeed, Murdoch's Internet starts and stops have engendered at News Corp. a relative "fear or abhorrence of technology," in the description of Peter Bale, who once ran the Web site of The Times of London and now runs MSN in the U.K. Consider these examples: the failure of Delphi, one of the first public-access Internet providers, in 1993; iGuide, the precursor to Yahoo and Google, which closed within months of its launch; his son James's aborted Internet-investing spree in the late 90s; the great promise of MySpace, which was shortly flattened by Facebook; and the second launch of Pagesix.com, which Murdoch closed this year, after four months of operation.

There, was that so hard?

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Oct. 13, 2009
Our writer's guide to getting published; National Bookstore Day
Our latest special publication, The Writer's Guide to Getting Published, has just been mailed to everyone who purchased it in advance. Newsstand copies should start appearing in bookstores in the next couple of weeks.

Getting Published offers 92 pages of expert advice on taking your idea or finished work to the next step: publication. We've brought together some of the best voices in writing and publishing from the pages of The Writer, who guide you through everything from crafting magazine queries and book proposals to working with editors and finishing the right agent. They show you how to "read" a potential market and help you target an editor who's a good match for your work. In addition, we list 365 agents, publications and publishers that are looking for submissions.

The Writer's Guide to Getting Published costs just $8.95, and if you order now you'll receive free shipping. Or, look for copies at Barnes & Noble and other bookstores later this month.

• • •

Publishers Weekly, the magazine on publishing and bookselling, has announced a new promotion to drive customers to the nation's bookstores. The first annual National Bookstore Day will be held on Saturday, Nov. 7, to celebrate "bookselling and the vibrant culture of bookstores." Participating stores, which number about 40 at this point, will hold special events that day. Authors are invited to participate as well by, for example, conducting readings or workshops, or by donating copies of their books for raffles and giveaways.

For more information, go to Publishers Weekly or e-mail PWEvents@reedbusiness.com.

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Oct. 9, 2009
Literary prizes add more books to reading list
As someone who is always searching for new books to add to a reading list that will never be finished, I often turn to literary prizes to see what reading treats I might add to the list. The month of October is already a bonanza with two prestigious literary awards announced just this week: The Nobel Prize for Literature and The Man Booker Prize.

• The Swedish Academy awarded Romanian-German author Herta Müller the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of her entire body of work. The Academy's secretary, Peter Englund, commenting on why Müller was chosen, noted that "She is outstanding. Her language is superb, she is extremely precise in her words - and she has something to say. She tells about homelessness and alienation, what it is like to belong to a language minority and how people survive under dictatorship." He recommends her novel, The Appointment, as a starting point for readers new to her work.

• English novelist Hilary Mantel received The Man Booker Prize this year for her novel Wolf Hall, a fictional account of events surrounding the machinations of Thomas Cromwell, chief advisor to Henry VIII. Each year, the Man Booker Prize honors the best novel written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland.

Looks like my list just got longer!

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Oct. 8, 2009
An agent's quirky blog stands out
Years ago I read Betsy Lerner's The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers and loved it. So when contributing editor Erika Dreifus reported on her Practicing Writing blog that Lerner, who now works as an agent, was blogging, I wanted to check it out. Well, you'll want to check out Lerner's blog, too, because she has a wonderful sense of humor and doesn't shy away from expressing her opinion. Hers has quickly become one of my favorite blogs.

Lerner answers writers' questions with candor ("Good question but kind of boring," she starts her answer to a question about whether book editors no longer edit), confesses to missing an annoying fellow commuter ("If you're wondering why I don't find another seat, you have not yet truly appreciated the magic that is me. I would sooner put my Papermate Sharpwriter #2 through my right eye than move."), and reflects on the, uh, glamorous life of an agent and author ("I have received an inordinate amount of fan mail over the years from the inmates of America. The most memorable was from an inmate who said that his three favorite books of all time were: The Bible, A Clockwork Orange, and The Forest for the Trees.").

In addition to Lerner's blog and Erika's blog, here are a few other writing/publishing/book blogs I regularly read:

Contributing editor Melissa Hart's Butt to Chair

• Lisa Shearin's blog

• Literary Rejections on Display

• Paper Cuts, a blog about books from The New York Times

• The Rejecter

What are some of your favorite writing-related blogs?

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Oct. 7, 2009
Winging it
As detailed many times in The Writer, the means that fiction writers use to get a story going range all the way from detailed outlines to basically nothing at all—just winging it, you might say. The latter approach of a non-method method is practiced by novelist Michael Ondaatje and interestingly described in a 2007 Washington Post article that recently came my way. As Post reporter Bob Thompson notes, Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, Anil's Ghost and Divisadero, pushes improvisation to an extreme:

He begins with fragmentary images or situations—a plane crashing in the desert, say, or a bedridden man talking to a nurse—and starts constructing scenes from the fragments. It will be several years before "a kind of approximate draft" materializes. Then comes a prolonged self-editing phase, crucial to Ondaatje's creative process, which can take two more years.

"I move things around," he has explained, "till they become sharp and clear, till they are in the right location. And it is at this stage that I discover the work's true voice and structure."

Permit me to quote the literary relative who clued me in to this article, who has, shall we say, a viewpoint. Writing of Ondaatje's completely improvisational approach, she writes: "You have to be a pretty darn good writer to allow your plot to meander here and there with no direction and still be enjoyable for your reader. If he did not infuse his writing with such brilliant poetry and metaphor, truly well done, no one would put up with this crap. Readers want PLOT and a discernable story arc, unless you're A GENIUS. So good for him, but your readers should be wary."

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Oct. 6, 2009
Goodbye, Gourmet
Some of us on staff were shocked to hear of Conde Nast's decision yesterday to shutter Gourmet magazine. I can't say I'm a foodie—my cooking skills are rudimentary at best—but I love to page through the magazine, especially for the travel pieces and especially at Christmas time.

But the deep and prolonged recession took its toll on Gourmet; its editorial content was famously expensive to produce, and ad pages dropped a precipitous 50 percent this year. Magazines across the board are looking for ways to trim costs, which the Los Angeles Times notes is now "suddenly in style. ... 'I don't think we'll ever see the heyday again,' said Roberta Garfinkle, director for print strategy at TargetCast tcm, which buys advertising for large companies. 'The business will come back as the economy starts to rebound, but certainly not to the levels it was once.' "

David Carr of The New York Times sees the apparent end of publishing's Gilded Age, and the ramifications will reach far beyond magazine expense accounts: "The age of the big, bold new magazine to fill a hole in the printed marketplace is over and now publishers will spend their days cutting costs at remaining titles to compete in a new world of commoditized advertising, no matter how luxurious the context, doing battle against digital upstarts that have none of the legacy costs of traditional publishers. Older titles need to justify their existence, and new ones? There may not be any."

Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield sounds even gloomier in The Washington Post: "Your content can be flawless and you can still fail. The Internet has created a nearly infinite supply of content ... which leads to declining revenue and declining ad prices. What you have is a spiraling vortex of ruin."

James Oseland, editor in chief of Gourmet competitor Saveur, notes in The New York Times that the end of Gourmet ""has a certain doomsday quality because it's not just a food magazine. It represents so much more. It's an American cultural icon."

Gourmet's offices were closed immediately; editor Ruth Reichl sent a Twitter message to fans: "Thank you all SO much for this outpouring of support. It means a lot. Sorry not to be posting now, but I'm packing. We're all stunned, sad."

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Oct. 5, 2009
Short-story collections of note
I was happy to see Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany's new short story collection, Friendly Fire, recently released by Harper Perennial. A few years ago, I saw the movie version of his novel The Yacoubian Building and loved it. Like the novel, it portrays the lives of the residents of an elegant old apartment building in Cairo from the 1930s to present day. The building is the common thread that ties the stories together. Aswany is a master at capturing that one telling personal moment that says so much about relationships, ambition, cultural and religious differences, and societal changes.

I was able to sample one of the new short stories, "The Kitchen Boy," at 52 Stories, a Harper Perennial Web site that features short stories from their list. "The Kitchen Boy" follows a brilliant young medical student's initiation into the politics of the workplace. Here, Aswany's satirical tone is delicious.

Also on the site, you'll find Lydia Peelle's "Phantom Pain," from her collection Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing, which was released last August. This gripping story about a mythical creature-panther, cougar, mountain lion?—roaming in the woods and an aging diabetic taxidermist is impossible to put down. Flannery O'Connor comes to mind when reading this one. (Note: The National Book Foundation just named Peelle as one of their "5 Under 35" fiction writers in recognition of her book.)

There are dozens of short stories from different collections on the site, which undoubtedly are meant to entice readers to buy the books. In the case of these two stories, I can only say, the site succeeds.

• Los Angeles Times review of the movie The Yacoubian Building

• The New York Times review of The Yacoubian Building

• The Yacoubian Building: First Chapter

• The New York Times review of Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing

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Oct. 1, 2009
Finding inspiration in nature
If you've been watching Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea, airing on most PBS stations this week, you're probably considering taking a trip to at least one of the national parks as soon as you can. A visit to one of the breathtaking spots in our parks could be a great starting point for a poem, essay or story. After all, who could stand amid the sequoias of Yosemite or the geysers of Yellowstone and remain unmoved, uninspired?

Looking for more than a casual visit? Writers can apply to become an artist in residence at several of the national parks, including Badlands National Park in South Dakota, Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, and Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Each program is unique, but they share the goal of celebrating both nature and art.

Or, if you prefer to enjoy nature's beauty with a group, you can sign up for a writing retreat, such as one of Page Lambert's outdoor retreats and adventures. O, The Oprah Magazine called her River Writing Journeys "one of the top six great all-girl getaways" of 2006. "The fluid nature of the river invites us to unleash our creativity. We play. We swim. We write. ... We discuss the pulse, shape and rhythm of writing," Page writes in her essay, "Where inner and outer meet." Look for the touching piece, in which she delves into her personal experiences writing in and about the natural world, in the November issue of The Writer, on newsstands Oct. 13.

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