Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

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Novel-writing as performance art

by Celeste Ng

What an awesome and terrifying idea: novelist Silvia Hartmann will write her next novel live on Google Docs and let anyone who wants to follow along—and send her feedback on her work. (Via.) Hartmann explains in a press release on her website:     This project, known as “Hartmann Book Live” aims to go one step further and give fans the chance to not only see the manuscript being typed, but to also comment on the storyline and provide feedback as the novel develops. […] On Wednesday, 12th September at 9am the author will let her social network followers know […]


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Pubslush your way out of the slushpile

via Mashable. There’s a new route to publishing your book: find the audience first. You’ve heard of Kickstarter, yes? Well, take that model, apply it to your unpublished manuscript, add in a dash of philanthropic good-will you’ve got a potentially game-changing new company: Pubslush. Been trying to find an agent, publisher, anyone to take your manuscript seriously? Perhaps it’s time to take it to the people: The process is simple. First, authors submit ten pages and a summary of their book. Then, we let you browse the submissions based on your preferences. You read a brief overview, and if it […]


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10 Social Networks for Writers

by Celeste Ng

We’ve talked before about the love-hate relationship many writers have with Facebook. On the one hand, it allows writers to connect with friends, fellow authors, and fans, making that whole writing thing feel a little less lonely. On the other hand—timewasting! timewasting! timewasting! Maybe you want to spend time on a social network and feel productive. In that case, Mashable has compiled a list of 10 social networks geared specifically towards writers. From Inked-In to Writertopia to We Like to Write, each offers different support to writers: critiquing, paid work, or just a community of other writers. Do you know […]


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"The writer is not the writing"

by Celeste Ng

Recently, the New York Times tackled the burning question of why authors tweet. One main reason? To connect with the reader, of course: For one thing, publishers are pushing authors to hobnob with readers on Twitter and Facebook in the hope they will sell more copies. But there’s another reason: Many authors have little use for the pretension of hermetic distance and never accepted a historically specific idea of what it means to be a writer. […] Jennifer Gilmore (3,463 followers) finds hearing from readers helps her understand the influence her novels have on them: “On Twitter, I have a […]


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User PapaHem99 gives this place 3 stars

by Celeste Ng

First, there was Ernest Hemingway, Yelper: Infusion Tea and Coffee House Category: Coffee & Tea THREE STARS I got up late and the sun was already high and I had been drunk the night before. The barista brought me a cup of coffee and asked if I wanted anything else and when I said no she left. The coffee was good and very hot. I sat at the table for a while. When I was done the barista came and cleared my mug and went back behind the counter. I ordered a muffin to go and walked out into the […]


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Facebook: the next ebook publisher?

We’re delighted to present another post by FWR’s editorial intern, Nicole Aber. Enjoy! Now that Facebook has conquered the world of social networking, could it be setting its sights on online publishing? Rumors have been spiraling recently about Facebook’s acquisition of e-book publishing company Push Pop Press. But the social networking giant says it won’t be dabbling in the e-book world anytime soon. Instead, it says that it will employ the technological know-how of the company—which released Al Gore’s e-book Our Choice—in its ubiquitous social networking platform. A press release on Push Pop’s site reads: Now we’re taking our publishing […]


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Facebook: Friend or Foe?

by Celeste Ng

Facebook: it’s the bane of every writer’s existence–at least, every writer I know. You sit down at your computer to work. Maybe you even get started on your latest story. Then you need to look something up. You open up your browser. And it calls to you. Come on. Just check me quickly. Don’t you want to know what your friends are up to? What are you waiting for? NEWS IS HAPPENING AND YOU ARE MISSING IT! Yet Facebook can provide huge benefits to writers as well. In the Michigan Quarterly Review, author (and FWR contributor) Preeta Samarasan explains why […]


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The secret lives of literary characters

by Celeste Ng

I have a theory that in 50 years, or maybe even 20, scholars will be studying a new form of fiction that’s just beginning now. It’s not exactly narrative, nor is it strictly prose. In fact, some of it isn’t even stories. But it involves imagining the secret details of characters’ lives, articulating their thoughts and fears, developing their voices and diction and tone. Unlike typical fanfiction, this new mode of storytelling often use social media or other unconventional means, as if the characters themselves were real people living in and interacting in our world. For lack of a better […]


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Joyce, Twitter. Twitter, Joyce.

by Celeste Ng

In honor of Bloomsday, the literary project Ulysses Meets Twitter is conducting an online reading of Joyce’s masterpiece today (@11ysses). Says the project’s website: This is not an attempt to tweet mindlessly the entire contents of Ulysses, word-for-word, 140 characters at a time. That would be dull and impossible. What is proposed here is a recasting or a reimagining of the reading experience of this novel, start to finish, within the confines of a day-long series of tweets from a global volunteer army of Joyce-sodden tweeps. Can you imagine such a thing? Would it be horrific, a train wreck? Or […]


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BookCrossing: Catch & Release

by Celeste Ng

Remember the movie Amelie, when Audrey Tatou’s takes photos of her father’s garden gnome in all kinds of faraway places? BookCrossing is kind of like that, but for books. Users label copies of their favorite books with special codes and leave them in public places, then log in to see who’s found the book and where the book has traveled around the world. Says the site: Release it into the wild. Referred to as the “wild release” (and loved by so many BookCrossers), this type of sharing is a bit like nudging a baby bird out of the nest or […]




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