Cory Doctorow defends the Internet, saying the worst piece of writing advice he ever received was to stay away from it. He offers some solid tips for avoiding distractions while writing and setting small, attainable daily goals. How distracted are you by IM, skype, blogs, email, internet research etc. while trying to write? Are you more tempted by online or off-line distractions? How (and how successfully) do you resist them?
I swore I wasn’t even going to blog about the whole Angel at the Fence debacle, but then I saw this: that York House Press hopes to publish this so-called “fake memoir” by a Holocaust survivor as a work of fiction; this book certainly contains some fictional (or, it could be argued, mis-remembered) details–including the one its title refers to–but author Herman Rosenblat really is a death camp survivor, and he hardly deserves to be viciously attacked as the next Margaret B. Jones. Here’s the publisher’s official statement, which defends, quite convincingly and movingly, their decision to publish the book […]
After an experimental operation goes mysteriously right, Jonathan finds himself at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, chained to a statue of Venus. He needs no food and breathes water like air. Bonus: He’s immortal. Jonathan’s meditations on love (namely his unfaithful wife, Kitty, who thinks the experiment failed) take him on an adventure to the mid-Atlantic ridge, into a volcanic shaft, and back to land–where he becomes a demon statue, a nimble thief, and even a super-hero.
FWR contributor (and original Long Winters drummer) Michael Shilling’s debut novel Rock Bottom, an account of a band’s final tour, is publishing on January 9, and the Emerging Writers Network is sponsoring a very fun contest in its honor: Come up with the best imaginary band name you can think of and post it by midnight on January 14 here; there’s a limit of three entires per person, and Michael’s the judge. The reward is a free copy of Rock Bottom. Coming soon…an interview with the author on FWR.
Editor/publisher Victoria Blake (Underland Press), along with programmer Jesse Pollack, is the force behind a new literary form: the online serial novel, or wovel; NPR describes it as “Choose your Own Adventure meets Wikipedia.” A self-confessed blog addict who loves reading frequently-updated online content, Blake thought it would be great to have opportunities to read literature online in a serial form, a la Dickens (and more recently Chabon), and to have that experience be interactive. Here is Underland’s official description of the wovel (from their website): Every week, the author posts an installment. Installment length hits the sweet-spot of online […]
From the Idioms Series comes a beautiful new book called Gateways; it features color reproductions of (and brief design notes for) more than 400 cover designs by more than 50 designers from more than a dozen countries.
I’ve been trying to read Muriel Barbery’s critically acclaimed novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and while I’m relishing many of the author’s ideas, they feel to me like just that–the author’s ideas, not ones that belong to the book’s characters; a wealthy pre-teen and middle-aged concierge spend at least the first section of Hedgehog (I’m on p. 114) hiding their gifted selves from everyone they know while sharing them, mostly in monologue/journaling style, with us. Their use of language is almost identical, as is their attitude toward (and analysis of) the world around them. So much of the book […]
On Preeta’s recommendation, here’s a great article from a mother who wishes she could still “read like a girl.” Do others (boys, too…this shouldn’t be so gendered) feel this way, that you can no longer really lose yourself in a book? I’d agree that it’s harder now, and that it depends on what you’re reading and the number of distractions in your life and whether or not you are officially enrolled in an MFA program at the time…but me, I can still read like a girl. What I can’t do, what I often long to do, is to write like […]
New Yorkish writers, take note: Where Edith Wharton grew up on 23rd St., there is now a Starbucks. On the one hand, I picture a quiet afternoon writing in this shop, imagining that Wharton once shared my same view of a (much changed) street. And on the other…I’m envisioning a new walking tour for NYC: “Starbucks and the City.” In my fantasy (wherein the coffee giant would not sue), tourists would amble from identical looking shop to shop whilst a green-aproned guide lectured on what once stood there or who once lived in the building. In addition to excavating layers […]
The book industry–hell, literature itself–is in jeopardy, and even some of the most avid readers are getting blamed. This has been a very traumatic season for publishing…even highly successful celebrity editors have been laid off from houses big and small, and some publishers aren’t signing any new books. It’s clear we need to think about change at every level of the industry; as publishers, booksellers, journalists, and authors raise the alarm, will we find creative ways to fight the fire or curl up on the floor of a burning house? Read how we might learn to publish without perishing, why […]
