Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2017 i The Writer

In April of 1887, two newspapermen named William H. Hills and Robert Luce released a small pamphlet called The Writer. Designed to be “a monthly magazine to interest and help all literary workers,” it was 18 pages long and offered a year’s subscription for just one dollar. The opening article explains: “There is to-day a great army of writers. And though it be true that each one will have his own methods, still the experiences of others may convey valuable hints and suggestions. ‘Everybody is wiser than anybody,’ and so, at least, some of the ‘anybodies’ ought to be able to learn something from the experience of ‘everybody.’” I often search our archives for timeless writing advice and have yet to be disappointed. Take these gems from the inaugural 1887…

Top tips for tackling a revision You’ve typed “The End” on the last page of the first draft of your novel. After dancing, collapsing in tears of joy, popping a bottle of bubbly, or just falling asleep face-first on your desk, it’s now time to tackle revisions. But where to start? First of all: Don’t. Take a breather. Set it aside for at least two weeks while you do your taxes, read books for pleasure, or binge-watch a TV series. A little distance between yourself and the work is invaluable, providing a much-needed fresh perspective when you sit down to reread. Depending on how you wrote the first draft – all in one shot versus editing as you went, as a plotter or as a “pantser” – will guide how…

So you’ve been writing and writing, and you’ve finally got a pile of completed poems. Now what? How do you turn that pile into the sort of manuscript that gets published, garners thumbs-up reviews, and maybe even earns its author a postpublication award? It’s hard to believe, but far too many poets spend more time working on an individual poem than on strategizing how to create the well-wrought, purposeful poetry collection that does all of those things. And that’s a huge lost opportunity because poems that are back-to-back in a book? They talk to each other. And they need to do so in a way that mirrors how individual lines and stanzas in a poem talk to – and work with – each other. Otherwise the entire enterprise can feel…

New York Times best-selling author Augusten Burroughs has written nine books – four memoirs, three essay collections, a selfhelp book, and a novel. His most famous memoir, Running with Scissors, chronicles growing up with a mentally unstable mother and an alcoholic father before being forced to move in with a wacky psychiatrist and his oddball family. The memoir was published in 2002; in 2006, the book was made into a movie, starring Joseph Cross as Burroughs, Annette Bening as his mother, Alec Baldwin as his father, and Brian Cox as Dr. Finch, the psychiatrist with off-the-chart clinical theories. In his 2008 memoir, A Wolf at the Table, Burroughs revisited his childhood, focusing on his father in a way we hadn’t seen in Running with Scissors. The book is very dark…

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” —E.L. Doctorow Ü While my mother was losing her marbles, I tried to crawl into her brain. Listening to her jumbled sentences, I pictured the microscopic beta-amyloid clumps and tangled protein strands, commanding them to unclump and untangle and resume their synapse communication. It didn’t work. So I jotted down our conversations driving to our weekly lunch date or walking in the garden at the independent living community. Her observations were odd and disjointed, sometimes funny, and occasionally staggeringly perceptive. I wanted to remember her words, and – I admit it – I thought I might use them for a character some day. But I did…

Aspiring writers are everywhere. That small fact is one of many things I’ve learned since announcing my first book deal. Every distant relative and former coworker seems to know someone who wants to write a book, and they have no problem sending them directly to you. I’m all too happy to help out aspiring writers. It seems like only yesterday I was there myself. However, there’s one question those writers ask that always makes me want to change my name and leave the country: “Will you read my book?” The request always puts me in the uncomfortable position of saying, “No,” which almost inevitably makes the aspiring author decide I’m a horrible person. But for the record, there are a few good reasons I refuse to read unpublished manuscripts. 1…

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN started her career as a television reporter in 1975, and her work as a journalist has earned her 33 Emmys, 14 Edward R. Murrow awards, and many other coveted honors for her uncanny ability to get to the heart of the story. The same skills that keep viewers glued to their televisions translate to the written page with her award-winning mysteries. Ryan has won a whopping five Agatha Awards, two Anthony Awards, two Macavity Awards, and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Library Journal selected her titles three times in a row (2014, 2015, and 2016) as one of the best genre books of the year. When she is not writing her acclaimed novels – four starring investigative reporter Charlotte McNally and five with investigative reporter Jane Ryland…

Information in this section is provided to The Writer by the individual markets and events; for more information, contact those entities directly. Subscribers to The Writer have online access to information on publishers, publications, conferences, contests and agents. Go to writermag.com and click on Writing Resources. F = Fiction N = Nonfiction P = Poetry C = Children’s Y = Young adult O = Other F N C Y 3 SEAS LITERARY AGENCY Represents romance, women’s fiction, science fiction/fantasy, thrillers, YA and middle-grade fiction, and select nonfiction titles. Query by email only. No attachments. Contact: Michelle Grajkowski or Cori Deyoe or Linda Scalissi, 3 Seas Literary Agency, P.O. Box 444, Sun Prairie, WI 53590. 608-834-9317. queries@threeseaslit.com threeseasagency.com F N THE AARON M. PRIEST LITERARY AGENCY Seeks mainstream and literary fiction,…

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” —Cyril Connolly Ü Norman Barasch is an Emmy-nominated screenwriter, producer, and playwright known for his Broadway plays and a career spent writing for television shows including The Danny Kaye Show, Rhoda, and Fish. Barasch began his career in 1942 at NBC, where, while working as a page, he recalls writing two scripts on spec and handing them to the head of the network, who paid him $45 apiece. He went on to write for radio, stage, and more than 19 different sitcoms. Among his biggest hits were his two Broadway plays, Make a Million, which debuted in 1958, and Send Me No Flowers, which debuted in 1960 and was later adapted…

David Baldacci shakes his head, deep dimples creasing his boyish cheeks. “I’ve read a lot of serial killer books by my contemporaries,” he says. “In so many of them, there’s no motivation for the bad guys other than they’re just crazy. They just slaughter people for the sake of slaughtering them. They kidnap women and imprison them and kill them later just because they’re nuts. Well, that’s pretty easy to write: ‘I killed these people because I’m nuts.’” It might be easy to write that way. Usually, though, it’s wrong. Veracity in fiction is often sacrificed on the altar of expedience. It’s a shame, because time spent fact-checking not only eliminates laughable gaffes but also keeps readers turning pages in the believable world created by the author. With his background…

Making a living as a poet has never been one of the easiest literary paths. Today, there are absolutely no shortcuts to success. While many publications used to proudly pay for poetry in the days of yore, it seems these venues are few and far between in 2017. I talked to editors at newsstand titles and heard the same thing time and again: Poetry coverage is shrinking. Kirsten Rian, formerly poetry editor for The Oregonian, noted that the newspaper “has been radically downsizing for a few years, and last year cut my position as well as most of the features editors and my boss, the longtime book reviewer. They did not replace our positions.” The monthly news magazine The Atlantic once stood out for its inclusion of poetry and fiction…

There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts,” announced Scottie Nell Hughes, CNN political commentator, on NPR recently. She added that throughout the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, “…people that say facts are facts, they’re not really facts…it’s kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true.” “ Feel as if you’ve just slipped down Alice’s rabbit hole to hear the White Queen exclaim, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast?” Exercising similarly little judgment, a man barged into a Washington, D.C., pizzeria, brandishing an assault rifle last December to investigate a fake news story about an alleged child sex ring run by Hillary Clinton. Solid ground…

Ron Rash grew up in southern Appalachia, and his work remains steeped in the region. It’s both where he lives and what he writes about, so much so that the Philadelphia Inquirer called him “the Appalachian Shakespeare.” But his beautiful, rich, lyrical writing resonates with readers way beyond any specific geographical region. specific geographical region. A gifted storyteller, Rash is a prolific writer, publishing seven novels (including 2009 PEN/Faulkner Finalist Serena), six short story collections, and four books of poetry to date. His most recent novel, The Risen, unfolds using two alternating time periods: one set in present day and another told in flashbacks from decades earlier. The result is a suspenseful, skillfully woven narrative about two brothers, a young woman, and an unsolved murder. The alternating timeline That was…

EXCERPT: LUST & WONDER Just when I broke my sobriety and started drinking again in moderate and controlled measure exactly like a normal person, I met this guy who wasn’t just a guy but a writer, and not just a writer but the author of one of my favorite books. In AA, you are brainwashed into believing that all the good stuff happens only after you stop drinking. Clearly they are lying; my life improved significantly as soon as I ordered a cocktail. Our meeting was very romantic, at least by the gay standards of the mid 1990’s. Which is to say, not at a gym or in the midst of a spiraling blackout but through fan mail. I sent him a note: Dear Mitch, Let me just say right…