Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2018 i The Writer

Readers, I think it’s high time we had a conversation about rejection. Rejection smarts. It stings. It makes us all lash out in unbecoming ways, because it is so wretchedly difficult to separate a rejection of our work from a rejection of our selves. Every single time we put pen to paper, we are imprinting a piece of ourselves upon the page. We work and we anguish and fret and sweat over a body of work, and then we choose to ship it off to perfect strangers with the vague hope that they will love it as much as we do. But here’s the thing: No one will ever love your work as much as you do. No one else dreamt it, shaped it, and bore it to fruition. Others…

DENISE VEGA Children’s author of seven books, including her most recent picture book, If Your Monster Won’t Go to Bed. AGENT: Lara Perkins, Andrea Brown Agency. RONI LOREN Romance author who is a two-time RITA Award winner and a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author with 15+ published books and novellas, most recently The Ones Who Got Away. AGENT: Sara Megibow, KT Literary Agency. CAROLINE WOODS Cambridge, Mass.-based author of the historical fiction novel Fräulein M. AGENT: Shannon Hassan, Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. KEVIN VAUGHAN AND JIM DAVIDSON Co-authors of the New York Times bestseller The Ledge: An Inspirational Story of Friendship and Survival. AGENT: Dan Conaway, Writers House.…

Writing fiction requires a process. At some point in the throes of drafting, revising, and fine-tuning, as you struggle to see your way through the fog of potentialities of character and plot, you may gain a sense for your story’s essence: what it’s about, where it’s going. This essence – or we might say its “heart” – grasps something important, something universal about your protagonist’s lot, about the human condition…at least it had better, or why write the story in the first place? Maybe you won’t know its essence until you finish the story. Maybe it will take writing the story to discover it. It won’t be a tidy little moral, unless you want to write didactic fiction (which, for most writers, isn’t recommended). Probably it’s more like a clearance…

“Publishing is a process made up of multiple partnerships.” This is the thesis that guides the annual Literary Writers Conference, sponsored by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) in New York City. Executive Director Jeffrey Lependorf explains that the conference is entirely devoted to giving writers tools to maneuver the complexities of publishing, including insight into the relationships that authors have with their literary agent, editor, publicist, and bookseller. “The people who attend this conference are those who have been through an MFA program or are completing one now, or have been out there honing their craft in literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry,” he says of the two-day event held in December at the New School. What you’ll learn Attendees will learn how to submit work to…

“What I am at my core is a journalist and a reporter, and I’ve always been drawn to stories that require a lot of reporting and research.” For more than 10 years, Joe Tone worked as a journalist and newspaper editor, most recently as the editor of the Dallas Observer. After writing “The Rookie and the Zetas: How the Feds Took Down a Drug Cartel’s Horse-Racing Empire” for the Observer, he found himself so captivated by the subject material that he decided to leave the paper to write a book about it. The result, Bones: Brothers, Horses, Cartels, and the Borderland Dream, is the recipient of glowing reviews from numerous publications. In one fascinating book, Tone skillfully weaves together a true story about family, loyalty, American quarter-horse racing, and the…

I wrote. I am writing. I will write. * “The writer must write. It is a sweet and demanding necessity; without the printed word, he does not exist.”—Nolan Miller It is almost one o’clock in the morning, and I am the only one awake. The house makes its nocturnal groans as the water softener flushes, the dishwasher kicks into the final cycle, and the refrigerator attempts to pull the internal temperature back down after a day of leering kids holding the door open – in hopes that the grocery fairy had inexplicably stocked it with more appetizing snacks than they found five minutes before. The dogs are irritated that I am on the couch, as I am betraying our unofficial agreement that they not get on the furniture in my…

Writers often look for a GPS to guide their way from obscurity to success. Author/illustrator Mira Bartók has enjoyed the kind of success many of us only dream may be ours. Her memoir, The Memory Palace, won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012. In 2015, with only a quarter of the first book written, Bartók found her middle-grade novel series, The Wonderling, in the midst of a bidding war that resulted in a six-figure advance from Candlewick Press and a seven-figure movie deal. It would seem that she put herself in the path of luck, and in so doing discovered “an invisible map of songs” (to steal a phrase from The Wonderling: Songcatcher, which came out in 2017). Yet to follow Bartók’s career is to travel a circuitous…

Peter Nichols: “Write what you fear to write, what is unresolved in you, what you may not know but want to. What you may want to revisit. Throw away analytical, intellectual thought and concept. Grope your way ahead. Follow your albeit dim but persistent vision, and see where it takes you. Don’t play it safe. Then your heart and eye will reveal themselves. What do I know? But this is what I’m trying to do.” Rebecca Chace: “I think that continuing to ask yourself ‘What is this story really about?’ is very helpful, and to keep asking yourself that question. The answer is not a synopsis. Ask yourself why you need to tell this story, and give yourself permission not to share the answers to either of these questions with…

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 $ = Offers payment >> CONFERENCES, RETREATS, FESTIVALS (JULY – DECEMBER) CALIFORNIA La Jolla Writer’s Conference San Diego, Oct. 26-28. Learn about the art, craft, and business of writing with lectures and workshops. Offers approximately 80 classes. Faculty includes athors, agents, publishers, and publicists. Contact: La Jolla Writer’s Conference. Email from website. lajollawritersconference.com Litquake San Francisco, Oct. 11-20. The largest independent literary festival on the…

EXCERPT: BONES Chapter One Foundations You’ve seen a horse race. Maybe you’ve leaned over the rail at your local track, hollering at the seven because you bet the seven, for reasons that made sense at the time. Maybe you’ve donned a floppy hat and gotten hammered off mint juleps, running in from the kitchen to catch the end of—or maybe a replay of?—the Derby. Maybe you’ve been in a Vegas sports-book, where not even the immortal gods of American football can muscle the ponies off those little TVs in the corner. Somewhere, someway, you’ve seen a horse race. Most likely you saw thoroughbreds, the horses that were loping down the backstretch when you stumbled in from the kitchen. Maybe you watched a steeplechase, for the novelty of seeing these graceful beasts…

* “Sometimes when I'm stuck, I really do need that cup of tea, or that chocolate, or a break, or a walk, but in most cases what I actually need to do is make myself keep writing until it flows again.”—Liane Moriarty Meg Howrey is a Los Angeles-based author of three novels: The Wanderers, about three astronauts training for a mission to Mars; The Cranes Dance, about a New York City ballet dancer; and Blind Sight, about the teenage son of a TV star. She is also the co-author, writing as Magnus Flyte, of City of Dark Magic and City of Lost Dreams, both of which were New York Times best-sellers. Howrey’s nonfiction has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Vogue, and elsewhere. Prior to becoming an…

Whether you want to sell a magazine article, business book, or pretty much anything between, the formula is simple: But if you’re like me, you’re probably tired of the boilerplate, tried-and-true query letters that feel stilted, stuffed, and stuck in the 1980s. Can we ignore the “rules” about having to use the plug-and-play query structure? Can we ever bring a little creativity to it? Absolutely. Here are just a few ways that your query can stand out and still get you the deal. Size matters After meeting an acquisitions editor at a conference in 2001, I followed up with a query and proposal combo for a poetry-writing textbook that was… wait for it…1½ pages long. Not the standard 20-30 pages most proposals click in with. And despite the compact size…

“We don’t want pieces that join the chorus. We want stand-out pieces that start the conversation or move it in new directions, that make you see things and think about it in a new way.” A glance at DAME’s online shopping page provides an excellent sense of the magazine’s aesthetic. T-shirts sport logos that read “#Feminist.” Tote bags show silhouettes of women, their fists raised, with the words “The revolution will be feminist.” The front of a black infant onesie bears the message, “No sleep till matriarchy.” The digital publication’s subhead reads: “For women who know better.” With this readership in mind, Editorin-Chief Kera Bolonik looks for dynamic and opinionated pieces exploring issues related to race, sex, class, gender, LGBTQ, reproductive and civil rights, disability, media, law, cultural trends, and…

Writing conferences, retreats, and festivals are some of the best places to hone your craft and learn from some of the top names in the field, but they also offer the unique opportunity to meet fellow writers. In what can often be a solitary career, it’s important to network and get feedback on your writing. Here are three perks you should take advantage of at any conference: The following conferences, retreats, and festivals are a small sampling of what the industry has to offer. You’ll find more market listings at writermag.com.…