Innehållsförteckning för August 2014 från The Writer

Not long ago, an out-of-town friend and I were sitting in a train station discussing book recommendations over lunch. On my way to meet him, I had been reading John Irving’s In One Person on the subway, and I was considering where I wanted to go next. My colleague had recommended The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, and novels by Elif Shafak and Malorie Blackman were high on my list. That morning, I had heard an interview with Edward St. Aubyn (whose Patrick Melrose stories I’ve read). Both my friend and I were marveling: How do you write stories so meticulously brilliant as St. Aubyn’s? This led to a discussion about works by Spencer Quinn and Fred Vargas. Clearly, we spun out of control naming books each thought…

I’ve written most my life, but it was not until my retirement from a career in banking that I started really putting in the time. I’m hopeful about my progress, but I get easily discouraged because of my age. Is it just too late for me? No, it’s not too late. Annie Proulx was in her 50s when she published her first story collection, Heart Songs. Frank McCourt published his memoir Angela’s Ashes in his mid-60s after a career teaching in New York schools. Deborah Eisenberg’s collection of short stories, Transactions in a Foreign Currency, was published when she was 41. When Raymond Chandler was 44, he lost his job as an oil company executive. Seven years later he published his most famous book, The Big Sleep. Donald Ray Pollock…

Summer is the perfect time to unplug from electronics, take your writing outside and reconnect with pen and paper. SADDLE LEATHER JOURNAL Keep your thoughts safe in this elegant journal. The durable cover is made of distressed leather with a hand-stained chocolate finish. The journal also comes with a roughhewn pencil to capture your most intimate thoughts and story ideas. Add a monogrammed initial for an additional charge. Starts at $30. potterybarn.com BOOK JOURNAL This book journal keeps your reading impressions and experiences organized in one place. Take notes while reading your favorite novels or writing guides, and refer to them later during your own writing process. The embossed cover holds three ribbon place markers, six tabbed sections and several adhesive labels to customize the book. Starts at $20. moleskine.com1…

Let it flow Tap your well of creativity. Creativity is at the core of everything we do as writers. It is the fuel we need to breathe life into our writing and into the worlds and characters we create. If creativity is a key to writing success, are there ways to enhance and cultivate this quality? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, psychology professor, leading expert in the field of creativity and author of Creativity and Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, believes there are. After years of studying creative individuals in a variety of fields, Csikszentmihalyi found ways we can all access our creativity consistently. As with any creative venture, writing takes time, and success does not happen overnight. In his book, Csikszentmihalyi reminds us, “A generally creative accomplishment is almost…

HOW DO YOU WANT TO APPROACH THE COMEDY IN YOUR FICTION? Most people enjoy a good laugh. Most people enjoy a good joke, a witticism, an unexpected twist or a good “snapper,” as Mark Twain put it. Fiction can be laugh-out-loud funny, as it was for Ben Fountain reading Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 for the first time. “I still remember reading it on the bus, trying not to laugh hysterically and, of course, failing,” he says. “People could see what I was reading, and they all understood.” But humor in fiction doesn’t have to be hilarious. It can be dry or deadpan, as in Nathaniel West’s work, offbeat or quirky as in James Thurber’s, dark as in Flannery O’Connor’s. The authorial sensibilities vary, but all are known for their humorous take…

The following exercises can inspire your inner (and outer) flâneur. BE A FLÂNEUR Take a walk, or dérive, in your own neighborhood or an unfamiliar landscape. Take your notebook with you and as you wander, stop to jot down impressions as they come to you. Remembering Woolf’s self-description as an enormous eye, consider yourself from this perspective, or if you wish, on a separate occasion, identify yourself with “an enormous ear” or “enormous nose” and see where your perceptions take you. GET LOST The Flâneur Society, founded to promote the ideas of Walter Benjamin, suggests that those new to the art can make up a set of instructions for themselves on how to get lost in their own neighborhoods. For example, you might get on the next bus, get off…

Bobby arrived at Sunny’s house on the first Saturday morning of the summer holidays. Everywhere glimmered reminders of the amassed blank days ahead, on which he and Sunny could impress any fantasy they wished. Excitement’s hot tickle rushed down Bobby’s spine, until Sunny finally answered the door with a familiar look on his face. ‘Hello Bobby,’ he said. ‘Hello Sunny,’ Bobby said. ‘Do you know what today is?’ ‘I know it’s Saturday. Is that going to be enough of an answer for you?’ ‘Not really,’ Sunny said. Bobby sighed. He hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and hitched up his jeans. ‘Then you’d better tell me.’ ‘Today is an important day. Today is the day that we commence Phase Three.’ Bobby had been dreading Phase Three. Phases One and…

Forget about dos and don’ts. Write. The writing process can feel like an endless series of dos and don’ts. Sometimes the wealth of advice on the Web, in print and in classrooms will overwhelm the novice writer, killing a project before it even begins. In the August 1976 issue of The Writer, short story writer Eleanor Hyde encourages readers to bend and break the rules. But no matter which rules you choose to discard or adopt, always honor this one from Hyde: “The only sin writers can commit is not to write.” Here are a few of her other tips. 1. Show, don’t tell. Ernest Hemingway spearheaded this rule in the first half of the 20th century. He encouraged writers to create vivid scenes through action and dialogue, allowing the…

Kwame Dawes “The drunk see into the gloom, hear voices” is the first line of Kwame Dawes’ poem “Exorcism,” an homage of sorts to Edgar Allan Poe. In many of the new and selected poems in his book Duppy Conqueror, the Jamaica-raised poet calls out to the voices of his own literary influences: August Wilson, Zora Neale Hurston, Kaum Brathwaite, Bob Marley. Dawes is a prolific and deeply musical, careful and caring poet. He has published 16 collections, and said that if he writes 10 poems as drafts, nine will move forward to fruition. “I don’t like to waste paper,” he explained. Which shows another aspect of his personality: He embraces humanity in all its sensuality and practicality and fierceness. We caught up with him at the Miami Book Fair…

You must remember this. TRANSCRIBING OLD JOURNALS CAN SPARK INSPIRATION. I remember 9/11. Mom’s early phone call, with news of smoldering towers just blocks from her childhood Manhattan apartment. My son’s unused plane tickets, from a flight cancelled moments after the towers’ collapse. Friend and colleague Aaron Brown thrust in the red-hot spotlight his very first day at CNN. Years later, almost every detail of that day is indelible. I don’t remember 9/22. The fine points of 11 days later had not stayed with me. My daughter’s soft backseat sobs as the family station wagon headed south on the interstate, dragging her miles and hours closer to a suddenly dreaded first day of college. NPR’s Scott Simon on the car radio, finding poetry amid sorrow. A cropduster’s ominous shadow across…

What does it take to make someone laugh out loud while reading a book? The answer is a sorcerous blend of neurology, human spirit, shared experience and words. Always words. We asked our online followers to recommend the funniest books they’ve read. Here’s their list. Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far) by Dave Barry The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N by Leonard Q. Ross Biff America: Steep, Deep, and Dyslexic by Jeffrey Bergeron Ned the Seal series by Joe R. Lansdale Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner Jeeves series by P. G. Wodehouse My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell Inconceivable by Ben Elton Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore Lord of the Barnyard: Killing the Fatted Calf and Arming…

William Faulkner’s Light in August is a classic example of the Southern gothic novel, exploring the complex issues of race, sex and religion amid the storied Mississippi backdrop. Some argue the book, which was published in 1932 and re-issued two years ago, is Faulkner’s greatest work. We asked three Southern writers how they capture the region in their novels. “Landscape and human destiny are often inseparable in my work. So I want my readers constantly aware of the world my characters inhabit. My goal is for the reader to see, hear, smell and feel the setting, and by doing so, understand my characters and their motivations better.” – RON RASH, SERENA “I am Southern; I write what I know. I also write from a place of deep ambivalence; my relationship…

De-clutter to develop your best ideas. I have been writing and selling my work for more than 20 years, but I still struggle to start and complete manuscripts. I spend more time collecting ideas than developing my best ideas into salable manuscripts. I hoard ideas. Perhaps you are an idea hoarder too. If you ever watched the TV show Hoarders, you know how hoarding anything can cripple a person’s freedom. The homes of extreme hoarders have clutter, some rotting and covered with insects, piled to the ceiling. The hoard, with its toxic stench, entombs the people, preventing them from moving forward in their lives. Likewise, a hoard of ideas can overwhelm you as a writer and keep your best ones buried and forgotten. Even if your home is organized and…

Fnoninishing a book is never easy, no matter what stage of your career you’re in. A writer’s life is always full of distractions calling out your name right when you’re looking for an excuse to stop or step away. But unfinished books sitting depressingly in forgotten folders on your desktop are nobody’s friend. Which is why this month, we bring you the best tips from some experienced authors on how to get that book finally written. READY TO WRITE “THE END”? HERE GOES. TECHNIQUE #1 Get away from it all. For many years, 15-time New York Times best-selling author Jane Green, who broke into the field by writing about thirtysomething women, says she was able to plod through her books at home, going either to her local library or a…

AS A STUDENT IN WATERLOO, Iowa, Nikole Hannah-Jones found the high school newspaper’s coverage of her community to be severely lacking. When she went to the teacher of her black studies class with this concern, he said, “Don’t complain unless you join the staff and tried to do something about it.” “It was hard to argue,” she said. She joined and found her calling writing the stories she believed were going untold. After taking an undergraduate degree in history and African American studies and a masters in mass communication, Hannah-Jones picked up where she left off in high school, doing investigative journalism, originally for local newspapers and now as a staff member at ProPublica, where her first project, “Living Apart,” centered on fair housing. Her new focus is on re-segregation…

You never know where Litquake will pop up in San Fran. On a fall night in 2006, writers and lit lovers crowded into a San Francisco laundromat. A microphone was wedged near the front beside a coin-changing machine. But instead of pushing her way to the mike, Cameron Tuttle, the author of the bestselling Bad Girl’s Guides, jumped on top of a washing machine and gave a reading she’ll never forget. “It puts a whole new spin on spin cycle,” Tuttle jokes. The scene is typical for Litquake, San Francisco’s nine-day literary festival. Each year the festival hosts Lit Crawl, a night of free pop-up events and literary mayhem along Valencia Street. Bars, galleries, clothing boutiques, bowling alleys, barber shops and alleyways are all fair game as venues. The unique…

Self-publishing 101 Self-publishing may seem like a quick ticket to success, but keep these tips in mind before you take the plunge. 1 Know your goals. Self-publishing programs offer a dizzying selection of packages and add-ons. Some print-on-demand publishers offer basic packages for a quick turn-around. Others provide advanced services such as design, editing and marketing. Decide what you want to accomplish with the book before you choose a self-publisher. 2 Be prepared to invest. High-quality self-publishing packages can put a hefty dent in your bank account. While traditional publishers cover all expenses, self-publishers require authors to pay for production, marketing, editing and distribution. On the plus side, most self-publishers allow authors to maintain control of the book and pocket 100 percent of the profits. If you can invest the…

Isabel Allende During the 1960s, Chilean novelist Isabel Allende was fired from a job translating romance novels into Spanish after it was discovered that she was altering the dialogue of the female characters to make them sound more intelligent. Allende quickly turned to creating intelligent female characters of her own and has gone on sell more than 56 million books, which have been translated into more than 30 languages and have won multiple awards in Chile and throughout the world. Allende is most famous for her literary novels – such as The House of the Spirits and Eva Luna – which often incorporate elements of magic realism and autobiography. Her prose style, illustrated in the following quote from The House of the Spirits, is both poetic and precise: “She had…

Summertime adventures can happen on the page. These writers use the long, sunny days to tackle their works in progress. FA Michaels @FAMichaels Up early, on treadmill, adding words to my WIP. Come on, characters. Let’s have some fun. #amwriting Caroline Jones Lewis @CarolineJonesLe Oh lazy hazy days of summer, of wine & roses, lolling in the garden or by the sea; of endless excuses not to write! How hard it is! #writers Marc Wobschall @MarcWobschall Bad writing weather! Glorious outside. Oh well, nose to the grindstone! Dean Crawford @DCrawfordBooks Feeling refreshed after a week’s holiday with the family :) Back at desk now and slaving over a hot keyboard as usual #amwriting carla ching @carlaching Beautiful outside today. Locked inside writing. On deadline so no time for cleaning, laundry,…

Cary Holladay has written fiction for 30 years and taught for more than 20. She developed the following checklist to strengthen her drafts and assess student work. Her advice: If vital elements are missing from your story, this five-item list will reveal what you’ve overlooked. 1 CONFLICT The heart of fiction is character development, and the best way to show that is by putting characters in situations of opposition and hardship. An old Gaelic proverb says, “If you want an audience, start a fight.” Ask yourself: What’s the fight in my story? What’s at stake? 2 AGENCY This means initiative, the ability to do things, with an emphasis on action rather than passivity. Ask yourself: What can my main character do that is unexpected and aggressive? Remember, aggression can take…

A residency at Jack Kerouac’s home leads a writer to wander and wonder. “…the end of the continent and the end of doubt, all dull doubt and tomfoolery, good-by.” – On the Road Freight trains pass a few times a day, but it’s the ones after midnight that I notice most. The sound proves more intriguing then, the horn more forlorn somehow. Or maybe that’s due only to the dark hour; I’m awake again pondering while others sleep. I arrived in Orlando, Florida, on the first of December, a sunny day, 75 degrees. I wore a puffy down coat, a cowl neck sweater and that perennial Paris accessory, a scarf. As I waited for my ride from the airport, I peeled off layer after layer of clothes. I came to…

THE ART OF FLÂNERIE CAN OPEN UNCHARTED AVENUES FOR CREATIVE WRITING. In Virginia Woolf’s celebrated essay “Street Haunting,” written in 1928, the author steps out to buy a pencil, leaving the cramped solitude of her writing desk on a winter evening to become “an enormous eye,” floating down the street, taking in impressions, skimming untouched through a series of grotesque encounters with vagrants and other incongruous inhabitants of London, some of whom will later appear as characters in the crowd scenes of Mrs Dalloway. Buying a pencil was, of course, only a pretext, an excuse to get out of the house and out of herself. What she really wanted was to immerse herself in the life of the city while remaining detached from it, a theme running through many works…

POWER AGENT CATHRYN SUMMERHAYES SHARES INSIGHTS AND ADVICE ON PUBLISHING. Cathryn Summerhayes is a force in the UK literary industry, having spent eight years with WME, the powerhouse agency, representing young British writers such as Richard Milward, David Whitehouse, Chris Killen and Clare Wigfall as well as established writers such as Alice Munro and Anita Shreve. If anyone is in a position to give writers advice on how to pick up an agent and what to expect if you get one, it’s Summerhayes. After I approached Summerhayes for an interview with Teesside novelist Richard Milward (whose thoughts on agents and writing are included here), it was clear that she, too, had much to say about the craft of writing. But her calendar was uncooperative, and she rearranged our meeting six…

A literary journal gives space to indigenous voices. Judy Wilson, founder and editor of Yellow Medicine Review, scrolled Facebook a few years back and discovered author Susan Power’s response to a discussion about the military use of “Geronimo” as code for the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden. “She had exchanged comments with a non-native individual,” Wilson says, “who tried to explain to Susan her own indigenous history as well as why he felt Native Americans shouldn’t be in the least bothered by the reference to Geronimo.” Power’s response encapsulated for Wilson the contemporary indigenous world view. “As soon as I read it,” she says, “I asked if I could publish her response in Yellow Medicine Review.” “Having a place where indigenous writing with its indigenous cultural perspectives is acknowledged…

Put your summer writing to work with these contests. F N P AMERICAN LITERARY REVIEW LITERARY AWARDS Offers three prizes for short fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry. Submit via online submission manager only. Deadline: Oct. 1. Entry fee: $15 for one work of fiction under 8,000 words, one work of nonfiction under 6,500 words or up to three poems. Prizes: The winner in each category will receive $1,000 and publication in the spring 2015 online issue. Contact: American Literary Review. americanliteraryreview@gmail.com english.unt.edu/alr/contest.html O AMERICAN ZOETROPE SCREENPLAY CONTEST Aims to find new creative and compelling film narratives and introduce the next generation of screenwriters to the leading production companies. The winner and ten finalists will be considered for representation by various agencies and for film option by big name studios. Deadline:…