In writing, you can break the rules — but only if it works
startribune.com – Saturday December 14, 2019
'Tis the season … so here's some unashamed regifting: a year-end roundup, featuring an all-star team whose members have appeared in these columns.
First, my Uncle Ollie, who sent me his copy of the New Yorker every week after he read it. If you let the quality of that magazine's writing and editing wash over you and if you follow its example, your writing will grow stronger.
Second, my mother, who taught me to read when I was 4, sounding out letters and words on a ketchup label. You can give your kids and grandkids the same gift.
Third, my sixth-grade English teacher, Miss Moore, who taught us to diagram a sentence, giving us a keen sense of the structure of language. Back to her later.
Fourth, my college English professor, John Finch, who taught us to create an outline before starting to write. The benefit: All your thinking goes into the outline; when you start to write, just follow the outline.
Fifth, the playwright August Wilson, who gave us this advice: "The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is."
The naked truth: how to write a memoir
theguardian.com – Saturday December 14, 2019
Some memoirists send drafts of their work to loved ones, or even not-so-loved ones, and where there’s a response alter their writing as a result. Others see no need for consultation. Either way, when writing about your own life, it’s important to get the monkeys off your shoulder – to be uninhibited by the possible fallout of your words. You can worry about other people later, when you’re editing. In mid-flow, you need the illusion of privacy, not to be anticipating people’s reactions (which are in any case unpredictable). Most self-censorship is cowardly. In Elizabeth’s Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton, the writing tutor Sarah says: “If you find yourself protecting anyone as you write … remember this: you’re not doing it right.”
Everyone has a book in them, it’s said, but as Martin Amis noted in his memoir Experience (2000), what everyone seems to have in them “is not a novel but a memoir … We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the CV, the cri de coeur.” Democracy itself may be under threat but the democratisation of the memoir keeps advancing. What was once a geriatric, self-satisfied genre – politicians, generals and film stars looking back fondly on long careers – is now open to anyone with a story to tell. And the genre has reinvented itself to take diverse forms: lyric essay, creative non-fiction, confessional prose-poem and so on. You don’t have to be famous to write a memoir. And it doesn’t have to be cradle-to-grave: a slice of life, or collage of fragments, can be enough.
Born of Friendship, the Book Group Is Making Its Mark as an Agency
publishersweekly.com – Saturday December 14, 2019
Walking into the offices of the Book Group, housed in a small (by Manhattan standards) building on West 20th Street, one is greeted by the standard design trappings of literary agencies. Posters of book jackets line the walls and dozens upon dozens of books sit on shelves hanging above desks in cubicles and offices.
In the conference room, where the books of clients sit spine out on shelves that stretch from hip level to the ceiling, the vibe is unusually positive. Those who work in publishing can tend toward glass-half-empty. The eight women who work at Book Group (four principals, one senior agent, one agent, and two assistants) seem different. It feels a bit like stepping onto the set of a TV show about book publishing—one cast by the creators of Friends, featuring characters written by Aaron Sorkin.
10 top tips for teaching creative writing
tes.com – Thursday December 12, 2019
Teaching creative writing is one of my favourite things. I love the imaginative and weird ideas pupils come up with. But it’s hard, no doubt about that, and students can struggle to trust their creativity.
Teaching creative writing
So, here are my 10 tips for creative essays:
1. Get story ideas from the world around you
Read the paper to see what weird things are going on. Listen to strangers’ conversations and steal them. If you love history, write historical fiction. If you love science, write about the moon. Make it your own.
2. There are no rules here
Creative writing is personal and individual. Nobody should tell anybody what they can or can’t do. Having said that, the following suggestions are tried and tested. They will give most stories a bit of a boost.
‘Her bottom was insane with orgasm’: Why are men so good at writing badly about sex?
nationalpost.com – Tuesday December 10, 2019
I heaved a sigh of relief as the results of the 2019 Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction were announced at London’s In and Out club last week. It was a joint win for Didier Decoin and John Harvey (a teasing reference to the Booker Prize judges’ inability to pick a single winner), who had equally offended in terms of penning “the year’s most outstandingly awful scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel.”
This meant neither of the women on the six-strong shortlist were saddled with the prize. I had some skin in the game, as I’d given one of the novels – Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls – a rave review, on the grounds her sex writing was so witty, wise and true-to-life. It would have been embarrassing for me, a supposed expert in erotic lit (I’ve edited two sex-themed literary magazines), if Gilbert had won.
The statistics were on my side: in the past 26 years, only three women have carried off the Bad Sex trophy.
Vicarious travels: On the travel writing genre
mancunion.com – Saturday December 7, 2019
Upon arriving at Waterstones there is one section we tend to flock to: fiction. We crave the idea of losing ourselves in others’ stories, travelling into our imagination. Whilst I’m an aficionado for the fictional, in recent months I’ve come across a new genre that allows us to explore the amazing and varied world we live in and follow the stories of real people’s adventures and experiences, of people’s subjective and varying experiences when travelling across the globe.
I’m now a strong advocate for the modern travel genre, and have a few recommendations for reading over the winter break.
Travel writing encompasses so many styles and sub-genres – the common characteristic is simply to give a new perspective on life, through stories of new places and cultures. It isn’t simply recommendations of where to go and what to see, like promotional travel magazines, but rather tales of real people going out and seeing the world.
How To Write And Publish An Op-Ed (Even If You Are Not A Writer)
forbes.com – Thursday November 28, 2019
My colleague, New School writing professor Sue Shapiro (The Byline Bible) has taught writing for 25 years. Her students have broken into top publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Newsday, The LA Times, and more. I spoke with Sue (we first met when as editor of a now defunct publication I assigned her to write a funny piece on Barbie) and asked her to share her best tips on how to write, target and publish a short op-ed for a newspaper or magazine.
EE: Everyone has opinions, so everyone has an op-ed in them. The problem is most don’t understand how to write them.
SS: I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t benefit from writing a short op-ed piece Many of my students have been published for the first time with op-eds. They have been offered jobs, internships, speaking engagements, and editors and agents have come calling.
Every newspaper is open to short pieces by not only writers but people in every field. Most publications pay between $50 to $500 for a short piece of 350-750 words.
The Number One Mark Of An Amateur Writer
forbes.com – Wednesday November 27, 2019
It's time for some publishing wisdom. Many people are freelance writers as side hustles. They write books, articles, brochures, or novels, while also holding a full-time job. Without years of experience in writing, there are some mistakes that everyone can make, if they are not careful.
As a writing coach and NYU professor I work with my students to build their portfolio and get the attention of editors.
I always tell them there is one way to immediately get sent to the slush pile.
If you want to be taken seriously as a professional writer, stop using exclamation marks as punctuation. It’s the mark of an amateur, and every editor thinks it, even if they don't tell you to your face.
Defining Roles: Agents & Editors
sfwa.org – Wednesday November 27, 2019
At the pre-publication stage, as you’re drafting queries and sending off sample pages, an editor at a publishing house and a literary agent seem to serve the same purpose: to legitimize your claim as a professional author, and to set you on the path to publication.
That’s usually where the similarity ends. An editor interested in your novel can make you a publication offer, complete with an advance, a contract, and a timeline in which your novel will publish. He will be your champion inside the publishing house, coordinating between editorial and other departments to make sure that everyone is working in line with the vision for the book.
But what if that vision, after a few adjustments, no longer matches your own? What if you aren’t sure about a clause in the contract, or you don’t know what the editorial process should entail? Your editor loves your work and wants to support you, but it’s not his job to hold your hand through the process. At the end of the day, he answers to the publishing house.
Author Charlotte Philby on how to write a novel when you’re really, really freaking busy
marieclaire.co.uk – Monday November 25, 2019
I have a life that’s messy and manic – hello three small kids and a Netflix addiction – so let me tell you how I did it and got published too. Can you do it? Yes you can!
The late American author Charles Bukowski famously said about writing, ‘If it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. Unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your gut, don’t do it. If you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don’t do it.’ I say bollocks. I also say that Bukowski clearly didn’t have multiple jobs, several children, mounting bills and a demanding Netflix habit to juggle at any one time, alongside his simmering idea for a novel.
Sure, I imagine for some the writing process is an unconscious purging of literary brilliance that falls fully-formed from their fingers. For the rest of us, it’s a slog. Even for practised writers, writing a book is hard as hell. I say that as someone who spent ten years as a daily news journalist whilst raising three children and simultaneously trying and failing and then trying again – and FINALLY succeeding – to get a book deal.
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