Innehållsförteckning för April 2014 från The Writer

Calling April the “cruelest month” has become a sound byte that creeps into nearly every National Poetry Month press release and blog post. Of course, in its entirety, it’s a hauntingly plaintive line: “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” Honestly, take a minute and read that one again. I wonder if T. S. Eliot would be horrified or delighted that this one phrase of his poem hit the big time. Which brings me to an even larger literary question: What would Shakespeare, who would be 450 this month, think about his place in both the canon and the quotidian? Throughout this issue of The Writer, you’ll encounter stories and micro features that recognize and…

It’s true; we often know a writer for his or her skills in one form. Still, plenty of writers have crossed the divide with elegance and mastery. Andre Dubus’ fiction is celebrated, but he also wrote essays. Grace Paley, known largely for her fiction, has also published several volumes of poetry. Anton Chekhov wrote both short stories and plays. Raymond Carver’s publications include short stories, essays and poetry. It is possible to do this and to do it well. Still, most writers pick a side (as the saying goes). Some are simply consumed by one form. Others find their skills don’t translate. If you’re considering branching out, by all means do so. There’s no harm in a fiction writer experimenting with poetry. In fact, the demands of poetry will no…

STICKY NOTES Much Ado About Nothings sticky notes organize character lists and streamline complicated plots. The set comes with a mix of colors and sizes, perfect for outlines and page edits. Shakespeare wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets in his lifetime; take a cue from the master and whip your work into shape. Start at $6. philosophersguild.com THEATER TICKETS The best way to learn from the master is to hear his words performed live. If a trip to London is in your future, catch a play at Shakespeare’s Globe, a replica of the Bard’s home venue. Standing ticket holders or “groundlings” get the best view of the stage and an authentic Elizabethan-era experience. Soak up Shakespeare’s words for the next time you put quill to parchment. Start at $10. shakespearesglobe.com…

Writing a poem is easy, like swimming into a fish trap. Analyzing a poem is hard, like swimming out of a fish trap. —From “You Must Revise Your Life” by William Stafford There are no fish traps anywhere near Poets House, a literary center and poetry library in Lower Manhattan. On a Saturday morning, with the snow falling softly on the Hudson River, I sat in a circle with a poetry writing group that included Kim Stafford (son of William Stafford), the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, 20 teenage girls (no boys signed up) and the works of the elder Stafford, one of America’s great poets, dead since 1993, but on that day very much alive in spirit and words. Nye first read Stafford on the back pages of her high-school…

TAKING 8 SIMPLE STEPS CAN INCREASE YOUR CASH-FLOW SAVVY. WHETHER YOU’RE A FREELANCER working on a new project each week or a novelist who only gets paid one big lump sum a year, cash flow is one of the biggest problems of a professional writer’s life. Between the inevitable delays of accounts departments, the pay-onpublication policies of consumer magazines and royalty checks that don’t come through for months at a time, most writers – even financially savvy ones – struggle to keep on top of their monthly income. Cash flow – the movement of money in and out of your business – is what can deliver peace and prosperity in your days or have you running around like a headless chicken, no matter how much you earn. It doesn’t matter…

The big sell Not everyone finds success using social media. Can you? For writers, trying to balance writing time with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and blogs can be challenging. Many writers feel overwhelmed and want to spend their time writing, not tweeting. But then the importance of being involved in social media is touted by industry experts, and many writers believe they should be visible on every social media platform. Does social medial really help authors sell more books? Is it worth investing valuable writing time to increase your number of friends and followers? Understanding the facts of the field and making informed decisions about the role social media plays in your writing life can help you determine which approach – if any – will work for you. In 2011, Romance…

What it is Quiddity gets to the essential writing across all platforms. Jim Warner drops the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Django album onto his office turntable on a Tuesday morning and sits down among organized piles of manuscripts and a well-used Wiffle Ball. He’s set to begin laying out Quiddity issue 7.1. “Can’t go wrong,” he quips, “with a little bit of xylophone first thing in the morning.” Warner, managing editor of the publication out of Benedictine University at Springfield, Ill., speaks in a rich, warm tone that’s perfect for radio – fortuitous since Quiddity International Literary Journal represents one part of a multimedia arts venue that includes a public radio program. Now in its sixth year, the magazine includes poetry and prose from dozens of writers in each issue. Often,…

Not long ago, I saw A.R. Gurney’s play The Cocktail Hour, which is a light-hearted, sentimental send-up of living room drama – the type of play that exposes the darker underbelly of family life. Fun as it was, it made me want to go back to the real thing, to Eugene O’Neill. Or Shakespeare. I would argue that no American did more than O’Neill to unleash the power of the living room drama, and that the playwright he learned the most from was Shakespeare. Although O’Neill never publicly named Shakespeare as an influence, Shakespeare was a constant presence in his life, beginning literally from the crib, since he was the son of an actor who worshipped and obsessively recited Shakespeare. O’Neill himself also read Shakespeare voraciously, and, after a bet…

William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. To celebrate his 450th birthday this month, we asked seven scholars and novelists what writers can learn from reading the Bard. “Shakespeare’s language models precision and efficiency. Consider the terse expressiveness of the Duke of York’s rebuke of a flattering nephew: ‘Uncle me no uncles!’ In addition to such snappy dialogue, Shakespeare teaches us that a kind of music occurs when long, Latinate words are set next to short, hard Anglo-Saxon ones, as when Hamlet speaks of his father’s ‘canonized bones.’ Long to short, abstract to earthy, spirit to bone. That’s Shakespeare’s rhythm.”—Grace Tiffany, novelist and professor of Shakespeare at Western Michigan University “The fulfillment of writing is not the page of words itself, but its performance…

The writer must have two personalities. The two sides don’t have to fight, but they each must take the stage separately. Each personality has a unique and critical role to play in the writing process: The hare writes, and the tortoise revises. The hare writes unconcerned with correct grammar or structure or rules because his or her job is to extract buried ideas from the depths of your murky subconscious, miraculously bringing forth innovative creativity. And the faster the writing, the better; these ideas must come to life naturally and meet no obstacles on their way to the page. Although it’s time consuming, revision is the perfect – and necessary – companion to wild creativity. When the hare’s wandering mess or bare-bones framework of a first draft is finished, it…

Novelist Anita Shreve wrote nine drafts of her latest novel, Stella Bain, before it was published. With persistence and passion, she saw the book through to its end, an approach that has paid off throughout her 24 years as a novelist. Time and again, her novels demonstrate how dynamic characters and complex plots can bridge the gap between mainstream and literary. The light through Anita Shreve’s window is pale and wintry. Boston’s skyline rises behind a church with Romanesque arches and a Tiffany glass window. The setting is emblematic of Shreve’s work: stark yet striking, with just a touch of the Gothic. A still life of a glass case of birds – placed beside the case itself – was painted by her father. Shreve also displays a small image by…

THIS SPRING MARKS the release of spoken word poet Sarah Kay’s first poetry collection. No Matter the Wreckage features her spoken word poetry, including “Private Parts” and “Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire,” the performances of which have collected more than 500,000 views each on YouTube. The collection also features poems written solely for the page and never before published. The poet, whose career blossomed on the stage of the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, reached stardom status, as much as any modern poet can hope to, when she gave a TED Talk in 2011, which more than 3 million viewers have watched. In it, she performs her most famous poem “B” (which was made into a short illustrated book that year) and introduces her audience to Project V.O.I.C.E.,…

The search Library databases provide important tools for mining fiction outlets. Short stories are flourishing in the publishing world, but finding new-to-you markets is not always easy. Yes, you can search for fiction outlets in some free and commercial guideline sites, although it takes a few steps to find a magazine and then to discover if it’s suitable. Magazines such as Good Housekeeping and Redbook once published fiction regularly, but no more. You’re unlikely to stumble upon a new fiction market by browsing magazines in a store. Perhaps you discovered a few new journals, but not all of them have sample issues available. The costs can quickly add up when you are buying copies to analyze before you submit. A shortcut could be visiting your public or college library that…

»CONFERENCES ALABAMA ALABAMA WRITERS’ CONCLAVE CONFERENCE Fairhope, Ala., Summer 2014. A workshop, conference and contest hosted by the Alabama Writers’ Conclave, one of the oldest writers’ organizations in continuous existence in the U.S. Contact: Alabama Writers’ Conclave, Sue Walker, president, suebrannanwalker@me.com alabamawritersconclave.org ALASKA KACHEMAK BAY WRITERS’ CONFERENCE Homer, Alaska, June 13-17. Offers daily workshops, readings and panel presentations in fiction, poetry, nonfiction and the business of writing. Manuscript reviews and academic credit also available. Keynote speaker Alice Sebold. Contact: Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, Kenai Peninsula College/UAA, 533 E. Pioneer Ave., Homer AK 99603. 907-235-7743. iyconf@kpc.alaska.edu writersconference.homer.alaska.edu CALIFORNIA BOOK PASSAGE TRAVEL WRITERS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS CONFERENCE Corte Madera, Calif., Aug. 14-17. This annual conference for travel writers and photographers is now in its 22nd year of offering workshops, panels and evening activities.…

William Shakespeare was a master of dramatic irony, a plot device in which the audience fully understands a situation or piece of information before the characters in the play. The device is often used in tragedy – for instance, when Othello trusts the devious Iago. It also works well for comedy – for instance, in nearly every Shakespeare comedy. With a third-person omniscient narrative, play a practical joke on your fictional character by withholding information. How will this lack of knowledge affect the character’s actions? Let your reader in on the secret. Does it change the reader’s opinion of the character? Build dramatic irony until the climactic moment when the truth comes out.…

Dani Shapiro is a novelist and memoirist. Her breakthrough book was the bestselling memoir Slow Motion, which details her early life growing up in an affluent, observant-Jewish household, dropping out of Sarah Lawrence College and then, at 20, living as one of several “keptwomen” of her best friend’s stepfather – a much older, wealthy, married man who enabled Shapiro to live an opulent and increasingly self-destructive life in Manhattan in the 1980s. He bought her expensive jewelry from Cartier and Bulgari, gave her a Ferrari to drive and a furnished triplex in Greenwich Village to live in. At 23, she was cocaine-addicted, bulimic and alcoholic. She turned her life around, however, when a car accident nearly killed her mother and fatally injured her father. Shapiro’s second memoir, Devotion, details a…

My first published magazine article didn’t match my submission. The overall message remained unaltered, but the editor beautifully reconstructed my words. The only credit the editor received was a name on the masthead, but my byline was prominently displayed for all to see. “Loved the article you wrote,” someone told me. I felt a little guilty. Something needed to change. Perhaps it was my understanding of the relationship. So I replaced my feeling of inadequacy with gratitude when I realized an editor and writer work together to create a piece targeted toward a specific audience. The guidance I’ve received from editors who have edited my words has universal appeal for other freelance writers, new or established, across genres. When a writer discovers what an editor wants, the initial pitch all…

As writers’ careers go, Sarah Treem’s has a rising arc close to superpowered. This fall, Treem, 33, will pen and executiveproduce her own Showtime series, The Affair, a drama of tangled romantic relationships starring Maura Tierney, Dominic West, Joshua Jackson and Ruth Wilson. Her latest play, When We Were Young and Unafraid, with drama diva Cherry Jones, makes its world premiere June 17 at New York’s Manhattan Theatre Club. Plus Treem is adapting Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living with Joy, Susan Spencer-Wendel’s trenchant memoir of terminal illness, for a Universal feature film. This professional triple-play seems well distanced from Treem’s graduate study in playwriting at Yale School of Drama barely a decade ago. Yet in that time, Treem has written, rewritten, slogged and persevered her way to…

18 checkpoints Jean Z. Owen’s first novella was published by Good Housekeeping published in 1945, and was soon followed by notable articles and magazine-length novels in Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook and other publications. Her 18 checkpoints to success are fundamental reminders about the importance of quality over quantity when submitting to publications. “The literary market is not like a slot machine that must eventually pay off if it is fed a sufficient number of coins,” she writes. “The quantity of manuscripts a writer puts in the mail does not necessarily increase the odds.” Owen had it right. CRAFTING AN IDEA 1. What is your motive for writing the story? Have a purpose that will interest and satisfy the reader. 2. Does the story have a theme? Be able to state…

A book in the belly Landscape and literary tradition inform the inaugural Iceland Writers Retreat. Novelist Randy Boyagoda and travel writer Sara Wheeler find stories in unexpected places. While Boyagoda’s first book features a fictional West African country, the novelist discovered his second novel, Beggar’s Feast, during an exploration of his ancestral roots in Sri Lanka, where a wardrobe sparked a new idea. Wheeler, a London-based writer who has written extensively about the polar regions, also finds stories through the spontaneity of travel. Although the writer sometimes schedules a specific itinerary, the story often finds her. “You develop a sort of nose for what might lead to something,” she says. “Seek out interesting people. Go someplace that looks more unusual than the others. Don’t go where everyone else is going.…

Tanis Rideout Tanis Rideout is a romantic. The Canadian writer felt drawn to ill-fated Everest climber George Mallory after watching grainy footage of him in “hobnail boots and Burberry tweeds.” This attraction led her to write Above All Things, a breakout novel that’s been published in seven countries and earned a place on the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award long list. Deeply researched, the story contrasts George Mallory’s attempt to scale the mountain with a quiet day in the life of his wife, Ruth. Befitting a woman who eloped to Paris, Rideout is also a poet. Arguments with the Lake, her second collection, explores the experiences of Marilyn Bell, the first person to swim across Lake Ontario, and Shirley Campbell, who failed in her attempt. The collection placed second in Canada’s…