The Writer January 2023

MY FIRST ASSIGNMENT AS AN EDITOR for The Writer was writing a column called “Lasting Effect,” which involved mining the magazine’s archives to find nuggets of past wisdom from the greats – Stephen King, Lois Lowry, Barbara Neely, Ursula K. Le Guin – that might still be relevant today. As long as you didn’t mind legions of dust and the occasional papercut, it was a fantastic gig. I distinctly remember the first time I headed back to my desk with a stack of archival volumes from our library. It was winter in Boston, the sun slanting low through the windows, and I flipped through each year with heady reverence, never knowing which literary titan might appear on the next page. But it wasn’t any particularly well-known name who reached through…

https://www.amazon.com/Rainbow-One-Line-Day-Five-Year/dp/1452174806/ref=sr_1_9?keywords=one+line+a+day+journal+five+year&qid=1667417918&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI0LjkxIiwicXNhIjoiMy44MiIsInFzcCI6IjMuNTQifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=one+line+a+day+%2Caps%2C216&sr=8-9 1. One Line a Day Perfect for memoirists and available in a multitude of designs, this “memory book” allots space for just one written line each day and is designed to be used over a five-year period. $16.95, amazon.com https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/2023-wall-cal-bibliophile-diverse-spines 2. Bibliophile Diverse Spines Calendar This wall calendar, a collaboration by Diverse Spines founder Jamise Harper and Bibliophile author and illustrator Jane Mount, offers a beautifully drawn curated collection of books by BIPOC authors. $14.99, chroniclebooks.com https://www.theliterarygiftcompany.com/collections/diaries-calendars/products/faber-poetry-diary-2023 3. Faber & Faber Poetry Diary This classic week-at-a-glance journal contains 43 poems to provide inspiration via verse all year long. $14.92, theliterarygiftcompany.com https://obviousstate.com/products/2023-literary-calendar 4. Obvious State’s 2023 Literary Calendar Each card on this postcard-style calendar features a stark graphic interpretation of a quote from a notable author, from Langston Hughes to…

IN BIRD BY BIRD, ANNE LAMOTT’S book of essays about writing, she says that she writes three drafts. The first is “the down draft – you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft – you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental, where you check every tooth to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.” Lamott makes it sound like she writes a book in three discrete drafts, which is not my experience of writing at all. I write many drafts before I submit work for feedback, and then I write more in the lead-up to publication. Instead of dividing my writing process into Drafts…

THE EARLY DRAFTS Because early drafts are messy and experimental, they can be frustrating. There are moments, as I’m writing, where I wonder if it will ever come into focus. Keeping the faith, therefore, that it will eventually work out is essential. I have a voice in my head that I call my Negative Editor. It is a critical voice and one that I banish during the early drafts of a piece. It is easy to ruin a project in its early stages by being too judgmental. I let all ideas flow during these early drafts, knowing that I can be a more negative, critical editor later, but for this phase, an openness to new ideas is essential. Dissatisfaction is what drives revision, and there is a lot of dissatisfaction…

Marissa Cummings is a research fellow at the University of Glasgow’s Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre. Although she and I were first introduced to each other through our mutual interest in our shared home country of Taiwan, I quickly realized that her work in accessibility and health care was also of deep interest to me: Her pinned tweet reads, “Why do we even need to say things like ‘inclusive design’ or ‘accessible design’? That should be the default. Force people to say the opposite and be honest about what they’re doing. Exclusive design. Inaccessible design.” Cummings is precise in her communication, and her current work centers around what she calls “health stories.” We met to talk about the importance of storytelling for folks who are chronically ill or disabled.…

Writer Lillie Lainoff, author of One for All, landed her agent while she was still a junior in college. But although she’s known since she was 5 that she wanted to be a writer, and had been diagnosed with postural orthostatic postural syndrome (POTS) several years earlier, she had only just started writing stories that included disabled characters. It was writing itself that led her to that choice: Lainoff’s September 2014 op-ed in the Washington Post, titled “Hollywood has it wrong: I’m a teenager with an illness, and it’s not glamorous at all,” netted responses from readers that nudged her toward making disabled persons main characters in her work. Lainoff’s stories until then had “disabled side characters, not disabled main characters, because I don’t think I felt comfortable yet writing…