by Joan Frank
Something strange happened when I sent out a handful of respectful queries, some months ago, to writers I knew—and to some I didn't—hoping they'd consider blurbing a new novel of mine.
The novel will be my fifth work of literary fiction. I also review literary fiction every month for a major west coast newspaper. I've won grants and awards—I await verdicts, as a nominee, for many others. Do these elements count? Enhance anything?
Read Moreby Erin Brown
I want to spend this month celebrating the printed book. You remember them, right? They sell them at places called bookstores. Of course, when I drove to my local Borders last week to grab a book I’d had my eye on, the lights were off and a hand printed sign on the door read, “FOR LEASE.” Through the windows (and through my tears) I saw a few empty bookcases still waiting to be broken up for kindling, and I felt a sadness descend upon me.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
Lately, I have been working on unraveling my impulse to try harder, along with an addiction to feeling strained and stressed – as though these conditions are true indicators of putting in proper effort and guaranteeing desired results. I love to write and draw, but when the work is marked with heavy effort it becomes chore-like, a signal that I am attempting to outrun fear and insecurity by trying harder.
Read Moreby Nikki Di Virgilio
At 19, I became pregnant. I wasn’t married. I had just started college. When I found out, it should have been a crossroad moment, but it wasn’t. I wanted a baby. I wasn’t afraid to commit, even when counselors told me being a young, unwed mother was the surest way to poverty. Even when my boyfriend told me he was going to play video games while I told my parents the news.
Read Moreby Laura Munson
I’m a bit afraid to write this article, the way someone who fears the mafia is afraid. But I have to give voice to something that has seared the last year of my life with a fair amount of ludicrousness. It’s just too juicy not to share. At the risk of having big-time New York editors running at me with sharpened pencils and a slurry of sticky notes, I have to tell you: published authors don’t have access to their book sales. Not more than twice a year when the royalties reports come. My book was published in April and I didn’t see that report until November. Isn’t that stunning news?
Read Moreby Jason Black
First there was Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. Fast-forward 35 years—yes, it really has been that long—and the monster books are in full blossom. Zombies and steampunk mix in Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker. Werewolves are something of the new hotness in paranormal romance, giving a new twist to the bad-boy love interest.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
There are many regional differences in the way we pronounce certain words or use certain expressions. For whatever historical reasons, Seattle people stand in line and drink pop, but New Yorkers wait on line and drink sodas. They are both right and important things for writers to know. There are also charming mispronunciations or malapropisms our children or friends might use with impunity, such as that of a dear friend of mine who always got “flustrated” or another friend from Italy who would say, “Now, don’t mis me understand.”
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
When I write it’s common for me, at some point, to start to worry about what others might think of my work. But this fear of criticism is always about thinking I am someone I am not - thinking I am vulnerable in ways I am not.
We teach each other that to be criticized is painful. That if someone tells us we’re ugly or stupid, they are mean and we are right to feel hurt. Whether we’re right or not, it’s still awful to hurt. So maybe we ought to rethink this.
Read Moreby Laura Munson
As many of you may know from reading my book, I am keenly aware of my inner critic. I didn’t used to be, but through years of feeling really bad about myself for not having career success and the subsequent pain and suffering from that way of relating with myself and the world…and then a few solid years in therapy and in other fields of self-work, I learned how to hear that inner critic, and I learned how to deal with her.
First, I named her. I called her Sheila, and I don’t know why. That’s just the name I chose. And then I opened my ears and listened for her.
Read Moreby Susan Varno
My head was pounding, my jaw hurt, and I had slept badly again. Dragging myself to my desk, I reached for the computer’s “on” button. After popping an aspirin, I started writing. If you ever feel this bad, you should go back to bed and take care of yourself. But what if your illness lasts for weeks or years? I’ve had health problems for the past ten years, ever since something went wrong during a sinus surgery. I’ve discovered coping strategies, and I’ve talked to writer friends of mine about their health problems. Here is what I’ve learned.
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
I remember being three or four, standing beside my grandmother, who was sitting in the big club chair in her living room smoking, and my father snapping, “Another nail in the coffin!” – his heavy-handed campaign to get her to stop. She did eventually quit her 3 ½-packs-a-day habit cold turkey and went on to live to 87 years of age. The woman who used to muse over how she once had an ashtray in every room of her house left it behind, with no withdrawal, never craving a cigarette again.
Read Moreby Aaron Goldfarb
You don’t realize this, but here’s how you’re going to promote your new book. During the first month, you’ll sit around your apartment all day obsessively checking your Amazon ranking, you’ll spam your friends with lots of Facebook posts and Tweets, you’ll have a big release party in the city you live in at the one bar a friend of a friend owns, then appear at a few off-the-beaten-path bookstores your publisher booked for you, do a few interviews with minor newspapers, radio stations, and websites, and just hope and pray.
Read Moreby Cherie Tucker
Our language unfortunately does not have a plural pronoun that includes both males and females. This lack has caused many headaches for writers in these politically correct times. It used to be correct to say, “Each of our customers will receive his statement on the third Wednesday of the month.” However, the old rule that used only the masculine pronoun, he, him, his, for everything has been tossed out.
Read Moreby Andre Dubus III
THE GOLDEN Gloves were three weeks away. It was a weeknight, probably Wednesday, and all day long Jeb and Randy and I hung sheetrock in the rooms we’d built in the widow’s house overlooking the water. The ceilings came first. The day before, we’d started nailing spruce strapping into the joists sixteen inches on center and while Jeb finished that, Randy and I were hauling sheets of plasterboard off the truck and stacking them against a wall in each of the three rooms.
Read Moreby Jason Black
We writers shower our protagonists with authorial love. We give them challenges they can just barely overcome, faults and foibles which make the challenges harder. We imbue them with character arcs and shower our attentions upon them.
But our villains need some love too. In particular, they need character arcs.
Read Moreby Erin Brown
I’ve written several columns about how best to approach the often scary first step of preparing to send your fragile, innocent manuscript out into the big, bad world of publishing. Fly, little novel, fly! Once you’ve shoved (or gently escorted) your query letter out of the nest to lead the way into the dark world of evil agents and slush piles, you then must sit and wait. Steeling yourself for rejection after rejection, the tears in your beers that will follow.
Read Moreby Dori Jones Yang
Are you your own worst critic? I know I am. Sometimes I say things to myself I would never tolerate hearing from a friend. Among the mildest: “You idiot! What did you expect?”
So when the rejections come piling in, it’s easy to see that others agree: I’m a failure.
Read Moreby Laura Munson
Okay. You know those words that you fling into the ocean and the sinking sun every time you’re standing on an eastern facing beach? Those sometimes spoken, sometimes thought words that come out like a beggar’s prayer? I know you’re kind of embarrassed by them, but let’s just fess up. As an exercise. Please help me be published to wide acclaim.
Well guess what? After 20 years and 14 books…it happens. And I’m here to tell you…it’s not the story you think it is. Your writer friend was right when he said “The only difference between being published and not being published is being published.”
Read Moreby Jennifer Paros
It has been a while since I first started writing steadily – around age nine when I began keeping a journal. In the beginning, writing was just a chance to talk more. Soon, it evolved into a means of telling the stories of things that were happening and the stories of how I was feeling about the things that were happening. And then, it took a turn and I started to write to try to feel better about those stories.
Read Moreby Ruth Schiffman
I hear that dating gets tiresome. After years of searching, the hope of finding one’s soul mate dims. When discouragement takes over, the quest can feel more futile than searching for the Holy Grail. I opted out of the dating scene early, marrying my first love at the age of eighteen. Still, I find the matchmaking process intriguing. Don’t get me wrong; pairing up people is not my thing. My interest in matchmaking is strictly limited to finding the right publishing venues for my stories and articles.
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