Innehållsförteckning för September 2014 från The Writer

Who are the most influential people in your writing life? I’m going to bet that most of us would name a teacher, and many would name a mentor in a MFA or other writing program. Since this is September, the official back-to-school month, we’ve had classrooms on our minds here at The Writer. That means we’re thinking about all the people who offer writing insights, give tips, use a red pen, ask us to go back and revise. And all the places – colleges, universities, night schools, community colleges, special programs – that support your work in process and progress. The proliferation of MFA programs, writing workshops and classes points to the thriving nature of the field and the unflappable imperative to tell a story the best way possible. We…

In the spirit of MFA and writing programs, we asked our Facebook followers: “What’s the most important lesson your best writing teacher taught you?” Your answers follow. Our conclusion? Writing teachers rock. “Write the things you are most afraid to write. Be brave and write them anyway.” “Let your voice shine through in your writing.” “I’ll teach you the rules to creative writing and then I want you to break the hell out of them.” “Keep on writing regardless of what life throws at you.” “Premise. You need to know the premise of your story!” “The story has to move down as well as forward.” “Spelling correctly shows others that you aren’t stupid.” “Determination and persistence. Without both these two crucial ingredients, no book ever reaches the shelves.” “Write, write,…

Drawing from the lives of actual writers can add intrigue to a story. For instance: Raymond Carver, Marilynne Robinson, Frank Conroy and Paul Harding have all passed through the Iowa Writers’ Workshop either as students or teachers. Imagine a scene in which this group – or other real-life writers in an academic setting – reveal and discuss an incident or accident that happened with a student. How does the event affect their lives? Are they trying to cover something up or discover something mysterious? What transformative quality does the experience have on their writing and relationships?…

WRITING ESSENTIALS Two cultures, both alike in dignity, lay the scene for great essays. T he debate that arose in 2010 after Chad Harbach wrote the essay “MFA vs NYC” for the muscular literary journal n+1 is one of those insider scenarios in which the people arguing represent vocal factions of a field – in this case, the MFA academic circles and the NYC publishing industry. The essay basically posits that creative writing programs that have proliferated in the last 30 years have propelled more writer-professors (seeking to publish their own work as well) into academia and may have also created a pricey way of extending collegestyle adolescence for emerging writers. On the other hand, NYC can be a dicey (as well as pricey) option. Ouch. Harbach handled the feedback…

A new book offers tips on writing just about anything. S o you think you can write? Imagine your friend languishes in the hospital, recovering from serious injury or illness. Think you could write a thoughtful, appropriate get-well note to her? No doubt. But pretend instead that your friend’s diagnosis is bleak: She has been given just days or weeks to live. Are you still prepared to write that note? When “get well” is no longer appropriate, where does one start? In How to Write Anything: A Complete Guide, writing coach Laura Brown tackles that very topic and more. Your friend dies; what do you write to her family? How might that change if your friend had taken her own life? If she’d met a violent death? Not all of…

As a teen, Kimberla Lawson Roby’s instructors dubbed her a storyteller. Twenty books later, it turns out they were right. K imberla Lawson Roby never had any aspirations of being a writer. Entrenched in corporate America, she whiled away the days as a financial analyst in Illinois, but as her 20s came screeching to a close, Roby realized her reality wasn’t what she wanted. At age 30, a premature mid-life crisis propelled her into an introspective dig deep into the recesses of her past. “I started feeling like something was missing, as though I had something else that I thought I should be doing,” Roby recalled during an interview from her hotel room in Nashville, Tenn. She was taking a brief respite from the previous day’s tour stop for her…

A yelet Waldman’s ideal workday goes something like this: Get up, get the kids off to school, sit down at her desk and write until it’s time to pick the kids up. On a great day, she even finds time for some exercise, maybe a walk or trip to the gym. “When I’m writing well, that’s actually what happens,” says the author of the new novel Love and Treasure. “There are long periods, however, of this kind of desperate procrastination when I will sit in the kitchen and I will ‘work,’ which often involves quite a bit of Internet surfing and then frantic selfloathing and eking out my word count.” Waldman recounts a recent moment of procrastination when, through some untraceable path of links, she found herself researching Orthodox Jewish…

New Mexico inspires writers. The alpine air and open stretches of desert draw writers from around the U.S. and Canada to the Hillerman Writers Conference in historic Santa Fe. In its 10th year, the conference focuses on both fiction and nonfiction genres. “Santa Fe is a magical city,” says Anne Hillerman, conference co-founder. “Other conferences tend to import agents and other big-name speakers. But our model is the reverse of that. New Mexico already has so many wonderful writers and editors. We pay our own people and invite others to come and learn from them.” Hillerman and her business partner, Jean Schaumberg, have long been committed to helping writers with instruction on the craft and business aspects of the profession. For years, they hosted one-day workshops in Hillerman’s living room,…

W riting classes and workshops can boost writers’ careers, whether they pursue a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing or sample nondegree writing courses. The first MFA programs were established in the mid-1900s, and now they number in the hundreds across the U.S. Each year, programs admit anywhere from a handful of students to a few dozen, with a wide range of niches, concentrations and formats. All MFA programs provide a terminal degree, which can give graduates the opportunity to become creative writing professors at other universities. But beyond the lessons of craft and critical analysis of work-in-progress, both MFA programs and non-degree writing programs expand a writer’s network, connections that can later boost publishing careers. According to George E. Row, director of the University of Oregon Creative Writing…

WHEN IT COMES TO A CHARACTER’S HISTORY, TELL THE TRUTH. SLOWLY. I n Ed McBain’s mystery-thriller Downtown, Florida orange grower Michael Barnes is in New York City on business when he is framed for the murder of a movie director. Over the next 24 hours, he races around Manhattan trying to clear his name and keep from being killed. Three pages in, we learn that Barnes was once in the army. A few pages later, Barnes makes the first reference to Vietnam. More hints of Barnes’ army service, including a dark event from those days, pile up as the novel unfolds. But not until page 269 does McBain fill in the final blanks of Barnes’ past. The revelation, timed with the book’s climax, carries a powerful punch. It’s a masterful…

Many writers struggle to pay the bills, but these tweets approach the starving artist life with humor and determination. Lola Blake @LolaBlakes Sweet fanciful delusions of one day being able to support myself by simply #amwriting and not having to work a real job #writerslife Rachel Lake @RachelKathryn90 Moleskin notebooks and pens are everything I’d hoped they’d be – except affordable #writerproblems Mae @mzeld The plural of writer is poor people. Jane Writer @WorkinWriter I am a poor writer who owns a 2003 Honda Civic and a Blackberry. My next story may feature a 30-year-old stranded on the side of the road. JayneCW @JayneCW Working on an essay about fear as a writer – will I make it? Will I get paid enough to at least fix my car? #amwriting…

Andrew Sean Greer Andrew Sean Greer is the author of five books of literary fiction, including his breakthrough 2004 novel The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which follows the story of a man who is born looking elderly and ages in reverse. It became a national best-seller, was selected by the Today Show’s book club and received critical acclaim from, among others, John Updike writing in the New Yorker. Greer’s most recent novel, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, describes a woman who is given electroconvulsive therapy, which ends up sending her back in time to inhabit the lives of two other women. Greer’s prose delivers its emotional richness via careful, controlled language, as in the following snippet from Greta Wells: “I had never considered children. No, that’s not true. I…

WRITING ESSENTIALS Are you ready to be on the other side of the interview? I used to hide behind my notebook. Whenever I interviewed someone, all my attention was focused on my source – never on me. Many of us work alone or in an isolated space, and we are rarely the subject of the stories that we write. However, for writers and journalists who have built a platform or are promoting a book or other piece of work, becoming the interviewee is a possibility. “The Internet is forcing us to be video savvy,” says Jen Singer, a freelance writer and blogger who has become a spokesperson for several top brands. “I knew that I was going to be on radio and on television, so investing in media training made…

There are many elements of a work of fiction to address in a book review. Here’s a list of areas to consider as you plan your review: SETTING: Where is the book set? When does the action take place? How does the setting— both physical and temporal— influence the story? CHARACTERS: Who are they, and how do they relate to one another? Do you find them believable? Engaging? Appealing? What is their dialogue like? POINT OF VIEW: Who is telling the story? Is it a third- or first-person narrator? Does the point of view shift? If so, what is the effect of that shifting? Which character or characters are the main focus? PLOT: Is it engaging? Easy or hard to follow? Surprising? WRITING: What is the author’s writing style like?…

M atthew stared at his wife of ten months and shook his head. Racquel, who was sitting at the opposite end of the chocolate brown, leather sofa, looked over at him and frowned. “What?” Matthew shook his head again. This time, his eyes screamed disappointment. But all Racquel did was purse her lips and turn her attention back to the flat screen television. It was a noticeably warm Friday evening in May, and though Matthew was a bit tired from his long day at work, he would have loved nothing more than for the two of them to be out somewhere together; maybe have a nice dinner and catch whatever new movie was playing. But as usual, Racquel was contently curled up—like an unconcerned couch potato—doing what she did best:…

WITH AYELET WALDMAN “Have you heard the joke about the Jewish husband? It’s my favorite joke of all time. A little boy comes home from school and he says to his mom, ‘Momma, Momma, I got a part in the school play!’ And she says, ‘What’s your part my darling?’ And he says, ‘I’m the Jewish husband!’ And she says, ‘You march back down there and demand a speaking role!’” To husband Michael after reading The Art and Craft of Novel Writing by Oakley Hall: “How come you didn’t tell me I’m not allowed to use adverbs?” “I’m turning 50 next year, and I have lost every proper noun I ever had. It’s so embarrassing. I can grow my hair long and pretend to be all youthful, but as soon…

After Jennifer Niesslein sold Brain, Child, the magazine she co-founded in 1999, she wavered at a crossroads of sorts. “My son was a teenager,” she explains. “I found myself out of the intensive years of parenting, out of a job which was centered around parenting. I kept saying, ‘What’s next?’” Noting what she calls “the awkward age,” those years in which people mostly in their 40s and 50s experience particular issues with their jobs and marriages as well as with their health and that of their parents, she launched an online magazine titled Full Grown People. “The topics here run the whole gamut,” she writes on the home page of the year-old publication. “Romance, family, health, career, dealing with aging loved ones and more. But what draws everything together is…

Fall into a fest Autumn is book fest season. Around the country, you’ll find free festivals with renowned authors, readings, book signings and top writing advice. Festivals are a prime opportunity to expand your writing network and connect with local organizations and authors. ARIZONA DESERT NIGHTS, RISING STARS Tempe, Ariz. Winter 2015. Hosted by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. Schedule includes craft classes, conversations, panels and readings, as well as opportunities to network with writers. Faculty includes Gail Tsukiyama, Paul Cook and Adam Johnson. Contact: Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, P.O. Box 875002, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287. 480-965-6018. pipercenter.info@asu.edu piper.asu.edu/conference CALIFORNIA BOUCHERCON WORLD MYSTERY CONVENTION Long Beach, Calif., Nov. 13-16. Join mystery authors, fans, publishers, book dealers, bookstores and…

We asked 10 writing teachers and professors for a peek inside their classrooms. Here are their top writing tips for students. “Understand that there is a difference between wanting to write and wanting to be a writer, and if you don’t do the first, you aren’t the second.” — ALEXI ZENTNER, The Lobster Kings, Binghamton University and Sierra Nevada College “Don’t worry about trying to please or impress; focus that energy instead on trying to be clear.” — TED THOMPSON, The Land of Steady Habits, Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop “As writers, we have to be wary of trying to control everything all the time. I think it’s critical that we give our characters and our sentences the radical freedom to surprise us.” — JUSTIN HOCKING, The Great Floodgates of the…

My question concerns the use of a foreign language in a fiction novel. I am writing a spy novel with a plot that begins in North Korea and has American characters, including the protagonist, a CIA hired assassin. When the Korean-speaking characters are talking to each other, should I write the dialogue in Korean or do I write it in English? I have been writing the dialogues only in English as the book is, after all, going to be sold in the west and perhaps South Korea. The answer to this question is tied to your intended audience and your perspective. Let’s start with audience: If you’re writing for an English-speaking audience, then the book, including the dialogue of Korean-speaking characters, should be written in English. You might establish that…

A writing teacher’s essential tools for the classroom CASCADING LETTER FILE TOTE Six letter-size file folders organize student work on the go or in the office. The durable, portable tote hangs on a hook for quick access and then folds away for easy transportation. Available in rainbow, pink and blue. Starts at $15. containerstore.com STICK-UP WEEKLY CALENDAR Keep deadlines and due dates straight with this weekly calendar. Write down the week’s writing to-do list, then peel off the sheet and tack it up below your computer screen or on the wall. Once the week is through, peel off the list and prepare to tackle the next project. Also available in a monthly format. Starts at $10. poketo.com OPENING LINES POSTER Hang this chart in your classroom or office and teach…

OFF THE CUFF Jealousy can be an ugly third wheel in a marriage. I think we should separate,” Brendan told me a few days before Christmas, five years into our marriage. We were sitting across from each other on our disheveled bed, but I felt a million miles away from him. “How would we do that?” I asked. My palms sweated as I faced him. My normally cheery husband was unnervingly serious. “I could stay in a hotel while you stayed here,” he said. I was in shock. I held my hands tightly to keep them from shaking. “Could we try couples counseling first?” I begged, my voice wavering. “OK,” he relented, his blue eyes watering. It was hard to remember that the two of us had started as best…

Taking these strategic steps may land you a quiet place to work on your projects. THE DAILY DRUDGERY of making a living and keeping house can definitely get in the way of writing the next great novel. Going off to a quiet cottage or urban space for full immersion in one’s characters and plot predicaments might seem like a dream, but the truth is a fantasy retreat may be more possible than you think. Writers’ residencies abound throughout the U.S. and around the world. You can stay in a remote cabin in a national park, settle into a bustling city or immerse yourself in a rural community with a group of artists working in various media. What exactly are residency jurors and directors looking for when they read through application…

SCRIPTWRITER ANDREW DAVIES BASED HIS NEWEST HIT SHOW ON A REAL-LIFE DEPARTMENT STORE ENTREPRENEUR. AND HE STOCKS THE SHELVES WITH CHARACTER, PLOT, CLASS TENSION AND SHARP DIALOGUE. W hen it comes to screenwriter Andrew Davies, only superlatives suffice. Iconic. Legendary. A singularly seductive scripter of TV and film. In his 50-year career, the British superscribe has earned all these accolades and more in the U.S. and the U.K. for his small-screen adaptations of classic novels, including Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit and more. Broadcast on the PBS Masterpiece franchise since 1985, Davies’ re-imaginings of literary landmarks have snagged avid audiences and given corset-and-bonnet drama a sexy, contemporary edge. Davies’ current series, Mr. Selfridge, is earning transatlantic kudos as it heads into its third…

It was while going through a boxcar that contained household silver – cutlery, tea services, platters and bowls, candlesticks – that Jack caught on to the origin of the treasure on the train. Up to his elbows in a crate his superior officer had instructed him to open, he grabbed hold of a heavy silver candelabra. For a moment he wasn’t sure. But there were four arms on either side, and one in the middle. He disentangled the menorah from the other silver pieces in the crate and then dug out a silver cup decorated with Hebrew writing. A Kiddush cup like the one his grandmother had on her mantel. Without seeking Rigsdale’s permission, he grabbed another crate and split it open with a crowbar. In this one he found…

More than three decades ago, suspense novelist Mary Higgins Clark began a whirlwind writing career that now includes 24 international bestsellers. In the U.S. alone, her books have sold more than 80 million copies. You could say she knows a thing or two about writing. But in her September 1980 article for The Writer, she admits, “Telling someone how to turn out a marketable suspense novel is rather like dancing with an octopus. Which hand (or tentacle) do you reach for first?” With wit and wisdom, Clark explores the delicate writing dance in five parts. 1 Plot Plot is the foundation of a good story. It must be organic, without coincidence or convoluted explanations. When looking for new plot ideas, Clark combs the news. She suggests that writers create a…

Margie Gelbwasser Change, as comedian Bill Cosby once said, is a skill unto itself. Margie Gelbwasser learned how to weather the winds of change at 33 when her family left their homeland of Russia as refugees. Landing first in Brooklyn and then settling into suburban New Jersey, Gelbwasser wanted to write from an early age. Constantly pursuing the hobby throughout her teen years, she completed her first work of professional significance when she wrote her thesis while finishing a master’s degree at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. The essay, a fictional exploration of the prevalence of alcoholism in Russian- Jewish culture, eventually grew into her first novel, Inconvenient. “There was never an event where people weren’t drinking,” says Gelbwasser. Her follow-up work, Pieces of Us, was an even darker…