Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i The Writer

At any given moment, I should be doing about three more things than I am currently attempting. I should be writing, of course. I have those three drafts to edit. There are approximately one million and five essay ideas floating around in my head that I haven’t even written down. Why haven’t I contacted my local library to start a writing group yet? And should I start a podcast? Jane said I should start a podcast. Oh my God, Twitter. And that’s just at home. My professional life is a constant sandstorm of pitch-reading, article-editing, meeting-presenting, conference-attending, social media-posting, and – the scourge! – budget-balancing. But I need to read! To exercise! To eat more kale in 2017! It is usually at this point where either steam starts pouring out…

Do I really need a social media presence? Whether you’re unpublished, self-published, or a well-established published author, the answer is yes, in this day and age, you need a social media presence. Everyone from readers of your books to the agent considering signing you will turn to the internet first to see who you are and what you have to say. Even if you’re writing under a pseudonym or prefer to remain an anonymous author, your book still needs its own online platform. But if you aren’t already online, don’t let this scare you. There are many channels you can operate on, and you can do so on your own terms. Here’s a quick starter guide: Twitter: Most writers are on Twitter. Why? It’s a showcase for good writing. You…

Tara Deal » Author of That Night Alive, winner of the 2016 novella prize from Miami University Press. » Her previous novella, Palms Are Not Trees After All, won the 2007 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize from Texas Review Press. » She lives in New York City. Robert Garner McBrearty » His short stories have been widely published, including in the Pushcart Prize, Missouri Review, North American Review, and Narrative. » Author of three short story collections, one of which won the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award. » The Western Lonesome Society, published by Conundrum Press, is his first novella. Jane Smiley » Author of 14 novels, three novellas, two short story collections, five works of nonfiction, and five YA novels. » Her novel A Thousand Acres won the 1992 Pulitzer…

Walter Mosley never intended it to happen but ultimately could not avoid it. After a long career spent writing 52 books, 30 short stories, and five full-length plays, plus scores of op-eds, essays, and political monographs, Mosley is now considered one of the leading men of male African-American writers, a successor to the legacy of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. Yet Mosley is best known not for his razor-sharp social commentaries but for his hard-boiled crime fiction series featuring Los Angeles detective Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins. Born in L.A. in 1952 to a white Jewish mother and an African-American father, Mosley first won professional acclaim for his series starring Rawlins, a laid-off World War II vet who becomes a private investigator. Mosley’s first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, was published…

What inspired you to write “Pieces of Echo?” My wife and I lived in Kuwait for a number of years, and it’s a place that stays with a person. The tiny emirate, tension-wedged between Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran, is continually doing battle with itself – tribal Bedouin history clashing against swelling religious conservatism and the omniscient temptations obtainable by abundant oil money. Like Daniel, the narrator, I taught wealthy Arab students at an international school and would often hear about the illegal things available to Kuwaitis, or indeed anyone with enough money or influence (wasta in the local dialect): narcotics and illicit chemicals, liquor and beer, trafficked persons in all their tragic forms, and so on. The Kuwait Camel Racing Club – a real place – seemed an ideal…

The following listings here are a sampling of what the industry has to offer. For a complete guide, visit writermag.com. 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 »AGENTS C Y ADAMS LITERARY Represents children’s and YA authors and artists with picture books, middle grade, and YA fiction. Submit via online submission form. Contact: Adams Literary. info@adamsliterary.com adamsliterary.com F N Y C ANDY ROSS AGENCY Narrative nonfiction, current events, history, journalism, science, literary…

“It’s always comforting to be reminded that literary whoring – I mean, self-marketing – has been practiced by the greats.” —Tony Perrottet It was the perfect story with the perfect hook. Sarah (not her real name) was looking through a stack of jeans at The Gap, singing softly to herself. A man, overhearing, leaned in as he passed. “Don’t quit your day job,” he whispered. Little did he know, singing WAS her day job. She was a mezzo-soprano with the New York City Opera. By the time Sarah told me this story, she had, in fact, quit her day job – to become a personal trainer in the small town of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Which is where I met her, in her privately owned gym, going quietly about her new life.…

“If you can't describe a book in one or two pithy sentences that would make you or my mother want to read it, then of course you can't sell it.” —Michael Korda Battling the block Two recent books focus on the spark behind every good written work – creativity – as well as the darker inner forces that aim to mute it. In On Being Stuck: Tapping into the Creative Power of Writer’s Block, Laraine Herring tackles any wordsmith’s nightmare: Writer’s block. “If you are a writer, you know it can be a haunting, terrifying force – a wolf at the door, a vast conspiracy, something that keeps you up at night, spinning your wheels, going nowhere. But what if we’ve been thinking about writer’s block all wrong? What if,…

List anything you can think of that qualifies you to do the work you’re doing. This is all about brainstorming, so write without censoring; not everything you come up with will be used. Create a bulleted list of all that might apply: • Degrees and education • Certifications • Work experience • Publications • Awards • Residencies • Volunteer or charitable work • Lectures and seminars attended or given • Experts or teachers you may have worked with or who recommend your work • Related work in competing businesses • Your expertise – what are your strong points • Side-ventures – places you may have traveled to gain experience • Skills, talents, abilities • Memberships or affiliations • Projects you’re working on that are related • Anything else you can…

Alaska Quarterly Review (AQR) » One of America’s premier literary magazines and a source of powerful new voices. » Founded in 1980 and published twice a year, AQR’s global perspective is influenced by the people, cultural traditions, and environment of Alaska. » Michael Dirda wrote in The New York Review of Books that AQR “remains one of our best, and most imaginative, literary magazines.” The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography » CCLaP (cclapcenter.com) is a fullservice arts organization that publishes original books and produces a weekly online magazine and monthly podcast. » Sponsors semi-regular live events and local classes and workshops. Nouvella » Founded in 2011 by Deena Drewis, Nouvella is an independent publisher dedicated to novellas by emerging and established authors. » Nouvella titles have been selected as…

Contrary to popular belief, a writer doesn’t have to live a solitary life. Connecting with other writers can help you acquire traveling companions for your writer’s journey, and it’s easier than you think. We need the camaraderie and support of like-minded individuals to keep us moving forward, especially when we’re just starting out. If you’re not a mega-seller or Pulitzer Prize winner, you might feel anonymous – just one of a billion writers out there. But even experienced authors need a shoulder to lean on. It’s quite validating to talk to people who understand what your journey is like. Other writers know firsthand how it feels to get a rejection – or two – or 200. They know what it’s like to revise a manuscript so many times you wish…

Ruth Ozeki’s novel, A Tale for the Time Being, won a string of awards, including the LA Times Book Award, and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, said, “Ozeki is one of my favorite novelists, bewitching, intelligent, hilarious, and heartbreaking, often on the same page.” I could not agree more. Published in over 30 countries, A Tale for the Time Being tells the story of a mysterious diary, which washes up on a beach on the Pacific Northwest coast of Canada in the wake of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The diary, written by Nao (pronounced “now”), a troubled schoolgirl in Tokyo, is discovered by a novelist named Ruth, who becomes obsessed with discovering the…

The editorial board of Claremont Review craves that “whoa” moment – that instant they read a submission and the piece instantly captures their attention with a surprising new perspective. “As readers, we prefer to be able to really inhabit the work. To feel deeply. To be changed,” says editor-inchief Ali Blythe. The review, now in its 25th year, publishes writers from Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. The editorial board – all volunteers dedicated to providing young people with opportunities to showcase their creative work – look for poetry, short fiction and plays, graphic art, and photography. Editors look for submissions from people between 13 and 19 years old. “It’s a time that can really impede expressive range through feeling that one is not good enough, or…

Recommended reading for novella authors Recommended reading for novella authors cont. EXCERPT: THE SOUTHERN EDUCATION OF A JERSEY GIRL Introduction LOVING THE LIFE THAT IS “I hear Thursday’s going to be bad in New York,” my assistant told me. “I hope you can make your flight.” “What, it might snow?” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’m not afraid of a little snow.” Living in Alabama, I encounter a lot of snow-ignorance. People in the South think snow is some kind of natural disaster. The mere mention of the word and everybody panics. Should we actually see a flurry? Cars slide off the roads. School gets canceled. Don’t waste your time at the Piggly Wiggly; you can all but forget about bread and milk. I’m from Jersey, so I think this…

“These bits of paper which could fall from stunned hands and blow about in the knife-sharp wind, which told you that the boy you’d suckled, bathed, scolded and cried over, was – well – wasn’t.” —From The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman. Submitted by Nancy Lohr. What makes this sentence great? I won’t get into the use of “that” versus “which” in restrictive versus non-restrictive clauses, except to say that many of us might be tempted to place a comma after “paper.” Not me. I love this verbless sentence in all its disjointed beauty. I count eight verbs here, but none of them completes the subject “These bits of paper…” A crotchety English professor might call it a fragment, but it is clearly intentional. The bits of paper serve…

The novella goes way back to The Decameron by Boccaccio, to Candide by Voltaire, and, within the last hundred years or so, to Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, among many others. So what exactly is a novella? As a form, the novella combines the compression of the short story with the sprawl of the short novel, and many writers as well as readers find this attractive. The novella typically runs about a hundred pages, though it can run a bit longer. But usually the novella is designated by word count, not page count. A novella typically starts at about 20,000 words and tops out at 50,000, which is the minimum length for a short novel. There’s no mathematical exactness about this…