Innehållsförteckning för August 2016 från The Writer

“A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick – a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.” —Neil Gaiman Whenever I finish a novel, I feel like I’ve just exited another world, some far-off planet, as if I’m stealing my way out of Alice’s rabbit hole and heaving myself onto dry land. I’ve spent hours, days, weeks with these characters; we part ways as old friends. I exit a good short story feeling like someone’s just punched me in the gut. I’m hunched, doubled-over; the story lingers in my thoughts for days. I still remember the goosebumps on my arms after finishing “The Lady, or the Tiger?” or seeing Madeline’s face, hearing her fingers claw at the tomb’s door for weeks after…

I want to traditionally publish my novel. Can I submit directly to a publisher? The short answer is yes – with diligence and for a reason. If you are submitting directly to a publisher, ask yourself why. If it’s because agents have turned down your fiction submission, perhaps it isn’t ready. Before you begin submitting to anyone, make your book the best it can be. Most big publishers don’t accept unsolicited submissions. Refer to the LMP or the market listings in this magazine for the contact information of those that do. Also, know your genre: This doesn’t mean knowing what your book is, but knowing who your book is for. Do your research. Submit to publishers specializing in the type of book you’ve written. Follow the guidelines. No exceptions. If…

“As the beginning writer starts racking up the writing hours, and thus gradually becomes the intermediate or advanced writer, she notices that the success of her work often hinges on finding answers to seemingly minor questions: How should I describe the exterior of a house? Does it work better to say ‘Fiat Spider’ or just a ‘sports car’? How much of a softball game can I show readers without boring them?” In Danger on the Page: A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Sex, Violence, Dead Narrators, and Other Challenges, Brian Shawver attempts to navigate the intermediate fiction writer through these questions, covering topics such as sex scenes, physical character descriptions, using brand names in fiction and many others. The ultimate goal? To embrace these everyday “technical difficulties, since they make up…

What inspired you to write “The House They Built?” I thought a lot about the word break and the notion that mental and/or emotional change often manifests itself in physical form. We break something because we ourselves are already broken. In this story, Randolph destroys the tree house in an attempt to both process the grief and pain he’s in and, in part, to regain a sense of control and mastery over it. What was your writing process like while crafting it? What about your revision process? I typically spend a lot of time – days – swimming around inside my head. Once I’ve figured out the puzzle inside my mind, the story tends to come quickly. For better or for worse, I write fairly clean. A first draft takes…

How often has this happened to you? You plunk down on the sofa, pick up the TV remote with the intent of losing yourself in a compelling drama or uproarious comedy, and – even with a thousand channels at your disposal – you find nothing that holds your attention. “I can write better programs than these,” you grumble before giving up and grabbing a book. If that describes you, you’re in luck: Television writing courses abound today, offered by top colleges and universities as well as dedicated film schools and private instructors. For those who have the financial means and are committed to learning how to create the next Breaking Bad or Modern Family, there are more avenues available now for honing those skills than ever before. But before researching…

For the first time since she was 15 years old, Stephanie Danler is no longer working in a restaurant. Thanks to a two-book deal with Knopf, she’s now able to devote herself full time to writing. Her novel, Sweetbitter, was written while pursuing an MFA and waiting tables at a trendy New York restaurant. Sweetbitter, which has received laudatory reviews, follows the experiences of a young woman, Tess, as she moves to New York City and (like Danler) starts working at a hip Manhattan restaurant. Relationships, love, life in the restaurant industry, and food and wine are key elements of the story. Real-life inspiration Sweetbitter is drawn from my life – I moved to New York City when I was 22, I got a job at a prestigious restaurant in…

What is your daily writing process like? I feel like there are two halves of life: The before-the-children work habits, and there’s the after-having-children, and they’re absolutely opposite. So once upon a time I used to get up early and write before work, or I would bring my writing to work and get there at 5:30, write for a couple of hours and then let the day begin. Now I work from home – my day job is working from home – so I get up, I deal with my kids, I walk them to school – I have twins, I come home, I have coffee, and I let myself do a little Facebook/Twitter time and then I turn everything off and I write. I still try to get the…

I was breathless as I watched the woman on stage pick up an invisible pair of scissors. “Sit still!” she admonished, her hands hovering over an empty chair. Snip. Snip, snip, snip. I couldn’t see the curls falling to the stage, but I could feel them in my gut. Then she sat down in the chair and was transformed into a tearful little African-American girl, whose hair had been shorn because her adoptive white mother couldn’t manage it. It was one of the most powerful moments I’d ever witnessed on a stage. I approached the performer, Lisa Marie Rollins, after the applause died down, and stammered, “What was that? I mean, what do you call this?” I fanned at my chest. She laughed. “Sis, this is solo performance.” My next…

The idea, I suppose, first came to me 13 years ago, as I was driving across the country, touring for my first book – a set of linked short stories that my publisher presented as a novel. I was moving through Texas, nearly a thousand miles of pavement churning beneath the wheels of my rental car, when I began to process the lessons of a 36-city book tour. My book, The Australia Stories, was based in part on my own life. I’d lived in Australia. While there I’d fallen in love with a girl, the Australian culture and their laidback way of viewing life. It was, more than anything else, a book about me, a taffy-pull of personal experience stretched out into fiction. Somewhere around San Antonio, where the I-10…

In our interview with Heidi Pitlor (page 22), Pitlor said one of her best pieces of advice for writers is to read a lot, and there’s no denying she’s one of the best-read writers in the country thanks to her work as series editor for The Best American Short Stories. But while Pitlor may have the advantage of subscribing to dozens of literary journals, the beginning short fiction writer may not be as lucky. Here are some ways to sample a lot of American short fiction without subscribing to every literary journal on the newsstands: The Best American Short Stories This is Pitlor’s best recommendation for fledgling short fiction writers. “It gives you a sampler of what’s in a lot of different magazines, and it does have [a list of]…

I’ve entered many short story contests and I’ve placed in a few, but haven’t won yet. I feel like I’m missing something. What are judges looking for? Placing in contests is no small feat. Congratulations! Figuring out how to make the leap to the winner’s circle can feel like a mystery. Your best course of action is to keep writing, continue to strengthen your work and submit more. There are few ways to anticipate what a judge is looking for. Most reputable contests are going to value strong craft, and some contests give a brief description of what they hope to see in a winning entry. You could read work that has won that particular contest in the past. This will be most useful if the contest has had the…

IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, BOOKS ARE FORBIDDEN. Nearly 20 years ago, while a teenage Reginald Dwayne Betts sat alone in his cell, someone slipped a book under his door. The book was The Black Poets by Dudley Randall – the contraband that would forever change his life, introducing him to the powerful words of Etheridge Knight, Rob Hayden, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez and, he says, many other black authors who showed him who he wanted to become. At just 16 years old, Betts pled guilty to an impulse carjacking he committed with a friend. Because of his plea, he was tried as an adult and sentenced to nine years in an adult prison. Betts actually decided what he wanted to be long before that day in solitary. He says it wasn’t…

I finished reading “The House They Built” late on a Wednesday evening. As soon as I finished the last paragraph, I said, intensely, quietly, “Yes.” Here was a winner. Here was a story that left me a little melancholy, a little shattered. Here was a $1,000-story. Here was a story that broke my heart. It wasn’t for me to decide, however. I sent off our list of around 10 finalists without comment to our guest judge, Heidi Pitlor. Days later, the verdict was in: She had agreed. “The House They Built” was our winner. The story is a painful and wistful one: A dead child, a grieving father, a breaking marriage, an abandoned tree house. Bergstrom shows a tremendous amount of restraint in the telling, gently shepherding the reader from…

Want to use your writing skills to change the world? Consider grant writing. Instead of filling corporate pockets, you’ll be helping nonprofit organizations get the money they need for worthy projects like food pantries and youth programs. If you’re lucky, you’ll even find clients who’ll give you repeat business so you’re not always hustling for work. Grant writing can be lucrative, but a writer must be prepared for hefty competition in the field. You’ll be competing with staff fundraisers and experienced consultants for a piece of that grant-writing pie. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to carve out a niche for yourself in this market. Step 1: Assess yourself If you’re a lyric poet by nature, get ready to use a different side of your brain. Grant writing can be…

Click on the submission guidelines for Carve Magazine, and you’ll see a grid labeled “Most Recent Decline/Accept Listings.” It includes the names of authors who have sent work to Carve, the titles of the pieces they’ve submitted and the names of the magazines that ultimately published those pieces. “These are listings of stories that Carve declined but were accepted elsewhere,” the editors explain. “Congrats to the authors, and we commend their perseverance.” Managing Editor Anna Zumbahlen explains that the magazine – now in its 16th year – publishes the Decline/Accept listings to encourage writers to stay engaged with Carve’s community and to celebrate their own successes. “Editorial decisions are subjective,” she says. “We feel strongly that writing is an ongoing process and should never end with a rejection letter.” The…

EXCERPT: THE DAYLIGHT MARRIAGE BY HEIDI PITLOR On Sunday morning, while the kids were still asleep, Lovell went to make coffee. He took note of the sprinkle of grounds that had remained beside the coffee maker since Hannah had disappeared four mornings ago. She preferred flavored, he “regular leaded,” as he called it. Making her favorite coffee that morning must have done little for her, in the end. He still half-expected, half-hoped that he would hear the sound of the front door opening and Hannah calling, “Hello? Anyone home?” Her arms full of gifts or flowers to convey a change of heart, maybe contrition, she would say that she had just needed some time and space from him in order to really think things over and come to a decision…

When Heidi Pitlor was writing The Daylight Marriage – a story about a missing wife and a suspiciously vacant husband, alternately narrated by both spouses – Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl –a story about a missing wife and a suspiciously vacant husband, alternately narrated by both spouses – was released. The two novels are very, very different books, but on paper, the comparison is eerily similar. We asked Pitlor to talk about what it was like to release a book that was compared to such a monster best-seller. It’s like your worst nightmare. It’s a concern, and I think it probably both helped and hurt my book. They said it was the next Gone Girl in Entertainment Weekly and a bunch of [other] places. But then people who loved that book…