New Publisher Listing: Captivate Press
firstwriter.com – Tuesday November 19, 2024
We are accepting manuscripts from writers in the U.S. and Canada only and are particularly interested in writers who have an advance social media presence. Please do not send Sci-fi, Smutty Romance, or Thrillers. We accept un-agented submissions. We do not require exclusive submissions. Please be sure that your manuscript is properly formatted according to basic manuscript format guidelines.
A Bag Full of Trouble: How I Found My Way Into My Debut Novel
lithub.com – Monday November 18, 2024
Bryan VanDyke on the Importance of Spontaneity and Chaos in the Writing Process
Some time ago–a decade at least, but it feels longer–a literary agent read a manuscript that I’d written and told me that she loved it, loved my style, but the book felt too calculated, too much like a math problem. It didn’t lack heart per se, she said, but it felt too much like a clocked thing, too neat.
I carried this criticism around with me for a long time. I did not sell the book that she read, despite a lot of trying, which was disappointing but not all that unusual in the long arc of my writing career to that point.
I had reached a moment as a writer where it was obvious I needed to adjust something, to change my approach in order to get a different outcome. But how does someone whose work is marked by its meditative qualities shed the sense that those qualities are at work without losing, well, everything that makes his voice feel like his own?
I didn’t start a new novel for six years—the longest fallow period of my fiction-writing life. I flirted with and abandoned a few projects, always early in the gameplay of composition. This wasn’t traditional writer’s block. I knew what I wanted to write and how to do it, but that was sort of the problem. The clarity of my intention was a bright sun that burnt off all but what I intended–and I needed something unexpected to take root.
In the spring of 2018 I was on garden leave—a fancy euphemism for laid-off—from my job as a digital strategist at a bank, and I needed to figure out my next professional move. All I really wanted to do was take one more go at novel writing. I was pretty sure that I’d never write a book that got published; still, old habits (and aspirations) don’t go into the night quietly.
Barnes & Noble announces the sale of Sterling Publishing to Hachette Book Group
barnesandnobleinc.com – Monday November 18, 2024
Barnes & Noble announces today the sale of Sterling Publishing Co. Inc. to Hachette Book Group. The publisher was acquired by Barnes & Noble in 2003 and now includes adult imprints Union Square & Co., Puzzlewright Press, Sterling Ethos and Spark Notes, as well the children’s imprints Union Square Kids and Boxer Books; and the gift and stationery publishers Knock Knock and Em & Friends. It is the publisher of New York Times bestselling author/illustrator Mo Willems, recent New York Times bestselling authors Caroline Chambers and Dan Pelosi, and acclaimed authors Melissa Blair, L.S. Stratton, and Dusti Bowling, among others, as well as a dynamic program of literary classics.
Sterling has been led by Emily Meehan since 2021 who oversaw the rebranding in January 2022 to Union Square & Co., influenced by its New York City’s Union Square Park headquarters. The company will remain under the leadership of Emily, who will report into Ben Sevier, President and Publisher of the Grand Central Publishing Group, a division of Hachette Book Group. All Sterling Publishing Co. Inc.’s staff, publishing assets and trademarks will transfer to Hachette Book Group.
Jamie Oliver’s pulped fiction brings shame on British publishers
telegraph.co.uk – Sunday November 17, 2024
The furore surrounding the TV chef’s latest book for children is pathetic – the industry should be fearless, not cowardly
I have in my hands a rare thing. Not an unsigned one, as the old gag goes, but even rarer: an un-pulped one.
For there we’ve been, myself and the oldest of my second crop of children (he’s six) on his bed in the evening reading. It’s a weighty tome but with lots of pictures and endless action. It’s been a break from the norm; a diet of Roald Dahl, The Famous Five, a lot of Paddington and Just William, the latter to which we howl with laughter.
And while he’s quite enjoyed it, I’ve struggled. For Jamie Oliver’s latest tome, Billy and the Epic Escape, does not perform that trick of the greatest of children’s book authors and engage both grown-up and kid. But, then again, I don’t think Roald Dahl ever knocked up a blinding peri peri chicken. Renaissance men are a rarity in this world, so for this Jamie Oliver, chef, restaurateur and campaigner, can be forgiven.
But as we neared the end of the book, news came that what we thought was a safe bedtime adventure turns out to be an atrocious insult, a book of outrageous offence, of gross insensitivity and reckless ignorance.
For there, within those pages, was written something so dire that the book had suddenly been withdrawn from books shops in this country and around the world. Shelves and tables were cleared, vans dispatched to collect the dastardly tomes and great piles in warehouses were removed. Pulped presumably, and then I trust, as Jamie has his finger on the pulse of sustainability, used to help ferment the night soil of developing countries or as fuel to power the schools of the underprivileged.
What was this transgression, this appalling act of insensitivity? And how on earth could it have come from the pen of a guy quite so nice as Jamie?
Artificial intelligence is better at writing poems than William Shakespeare, a bizarre new study has found
thesun.co.uk – Friday November 15, 2024
PEOPLE prefer poems written by artificial intelligence to works by famous writers like Shakespeare and Lord Byron, a study has found.
Readers rated virtual verse as more emotional, creative and beautiful — until they found it was churned out by a bot.
Scientists think rhymes written by algorithms use simpler language, so people enjoy them more than complicated old classics.
They tested the effects on 2,300 people who were not poetry experts — and found readers could not tell the difference.
Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, Pittsburgh University’s Brian Porter said: “Like AI-generated paintings and faces, AI poems are now ‘more human than human’.
“We find people rate AI-generated poems more highly. However, they evaluate them more negatively when told the poem is AI generated.”
Fun and useful Christmas gifts for writers
scottishbooktrust.com – Friday November 15, 2024
A few fun ideas for treating the writer in your life this festive season
Picking out Christmas gifts for writers can be tricky. After all, it’s not possible to pop a literary agent or massive book deal under the tree. Luckily, there are lots of other brilliant ideas for making the writer in your life feel special over the holidays. Here are a few of our favourites.
Books about writing
Even the most experienced writers sometimes need a little boost and that’s when books about harnessing creativity or examining the writing process are perfect. We’ve gathered together a few great suggestions in our writing about writing book list. I can also guarantee that if you walk into your local bookshop and ask what the staff recommend, they’ll be able to pick out something inspiring for you.
New Literary Agent Listing: Abi Fellows
firstwriter.com – Thursday November 14, 2024
For fiction, please send your cover letter, one-page synopsis and first three chapters. For non-fiction, please send a proposal (including overview of book's main idea, information about you the author / why you are the person to write the book, an outline of full book with chapter breakdowns / descriptions and sources, a sample chapter and, if these are available to you, media links, advance praise, comparable titles).
'Three Women' Writer Lisa Taddeo Offers 3 Writing Insights Every Aspiring TV Writer Should Know
screencraft.org – Thursday November 14, 2024
In ScreenCraft’s new interview with author and showrunner Lisa Taddeo, we dive into the art of adaptation and screenwriting. The writer recently brought her acclaimed book Three Women to the screen, and she has quite a few things to teach us about her process.
The Starz series features Shailene Woodley, Betty Gilpin, DeWanda Wise, and Gabrielle Creevy, and it’s based on Taddeo's bestselling exploration of desire, intimacy, and vulnerability. In the show, an author (Woodley) tells the complex stories of three women as they navigate the highs and lows of love and life.
It’s nonfiction—a true depiction of these women’s relationships and (at times, shocking) sex lives.
Elements of Style: How You Write What You Write: Creative Writing Workshop with Jennifer Landretti
orionmagazine.org – Thursday November 14, 2024
Style, one could say, is how you write what you write. It’s the discrete way that any sort of writing unites the most common elements of the craft: word choice, sentence structure, the organization and order of whatever the writer is expressing. While an evocative style tempts us to imitation, the results are rarely anything more than a self-conscious study on the path to developing our own authentic style. All accomplished styles seem to hide their gifts in the open. They are bewitchingly sly— “insincere” Oscar Wilde would say—often multivalent, always with an eye toward what they’ve left out. Skillful stylists such as Elizabeth Strout, Mary Oliver, or Wendell Berry seem to produce without effort the singular way that a story, poem, or essay should unfold, while the voices that grace their pages—that of a character or narrator—seem to materialize in our imaginations as a complete person with spiritual heft, a thriving sensibility, arrested there in art and shimmering for as long as the words exist. At its finest, style is a sort of gestalt of soul.
So, how do we understand and craft our own styles? We’ll explore that question. We’ll do so by working primarily with the personal essay while dipping periodically into poetry. We’ll examine the effects of word choice and sentence structure, as well as consider some of the organizational strategies that essayists use. Always, we’ll keep alive the question of style: What’s yours? How so? Why so? We’ll sample a range of writers, from Joan Didion and Elizabeth Bishop to Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, and Patricia Hampl, distinguished stylists all. Rather than map out a set curriculum, I’ll use a more organic approach: beyond the first couple of classes, I’ll adapt the course to the direction that class members seem most interested in going. Whatever direction we do go, we’ll undertake a variety of eye-opening, generative exercises and, I hope, enjoy several lively discussions, each centered on a particular aspect of style. This course is open to writers of all skill levels.
Duration: This online course meets from January 12th – March 2nd over eight consecutive Sundays from 6-8 pm ET (5-7 CT, 4-6 MT, 3-5 PT).
Application window: November 1-15
New Writing North announces winter programme
atvtoday.co.uk – Thursday November 14, 2024
New Writing North has announced its winter programme, featuring a range of opportunities for aspiring and emerging writers across the region…
The Newcastle-based charity supports the development of professional skills for writers in the north, as well as encouraging writing and reading for pleasure and wellbeing. This winter sees an array of career development opportunities for emerging creatives, including paid work placements in publishing and professional industry workshops.
Anna Disley, Executive Director of Programme and Impact at New Writing North:
“This winter, there’s a chance for emerging creatives to kick-start, explore or develop careers with our far-ranging programme of workshops, courses, awards, and work placements. Our mission is to practically support and nurture talent from across our communities, and remove barriers to transformative creative opportunities. Thanks to our partners and supporters, there are a number of bursaries for career-making prospects on offer too.”
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