Innehållsförteckning för August 2017 från The Writer

How much snide commentary there is about the memoir these days. Oh, it’s certainly true that agents are flooded with some not-very-good memoirs, that some not-very-true memoirs have made their way to publication, that shelves are cluttered with not-veryoriginal works from writers hoping to sneak to success by riding a mega-best-seller’s coattails. But why is that any reason to damn an entire genre? Must we condemn all vampire stories because of the deluge of bland Twilight copycats? Should we take up arms against the essay just because a rash of sensationalist clickbait has overtaken the internet? Poppycock, I say, with full knowledge of how ridiculous that word will look on this page, because no other word would suffice when confronted with such ridiculous notions. Imagine if Mary Karr had listened…

KATE BRAVERMAN • A California writer of short fiction, novels, nonfiction, and essays. • Her memoir Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles won the 2005 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. • City Lights is publishing her new book of stories, A Good Day for Seppuku, in February. SHANNON LEONE FOWLER • An author, marine biologist, and single mother of three young children. • Her first book, Traveling with Ghosts (Simon & Schuster), details the solo journey she took – through war-ravaged Eastern Europe, Israel, and beyond – to find peace after her fiancé suffered a fatal attack by a box jellyfish in Thailand. It is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. • Her essays have been published in The Guardian, Elle, Real Simple, Lonely Planet, You Magazine,…

I HAD ALREADY WRITTEN a hard-earned 20,000 words of my current fiction manuscript when my critique partner told me about a new how-to book that would forever change how I approach novel-writing: Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel by Lisa Cron. After that recommendation, I figured I’d buy it and see what she had to say. After all, no one could force me to rewrite my 20,000 words if I didn’t want to. So on Aug. 25, 2016, 16 days after its release, I clicked the “buy” button on Amazon. After I started reading and doing the step-by-step exercises, it was clear that I would want to rewrite. Actually, overhaul would be a better word. Story Genius forced me to…

Here are some further resources: • One of the most vibrant publishers of short forms, Rose Metal Press has published a Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction: Advice and Essential Exercises from Respected Writers, Editors, & Teachers (edited by Dinty W. Moore), featuring 26 writers examining the form and providing examples. • Family Resemblance: An Anthology and Exploration of 8 Hybrid Literary Genres, edited by Marcela Sulak and Jacqueline Kolosov, has a healthy section on short-form nonfiction with contributions by Brenda Miller, Ander Monson, Patricia Vigderman, Sarah Gorham, and Bret Lott. • Judith Kitchen’s popular anthologies of flash nonfiction include In Short, In Brief, Short Takes, and Brief Encounters. • The Iota Conference on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada (just over the bridge from Lubec, Maine), is “a celebration of…

You’ve lived a full and rich life, and now you want to write about it. How much of a commitment are you willing to make in order to learn how to craft a memoir that truly reveals your inner self? Unless your answer is “as much as it takes,” then Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Writing Down the Soul probably isn’t for you. The Santa Barbara-based, ninemonth, non-MFA certificate program is an intensive immersion covering multiple aspects of memoir writing. Though most of the program is spent working online, students also have two on-campus residencies: once at the beginning of the program and once again at the end. Why devote so much time and thought to this particular genre? “There’s a quote by Carl Jung where he talks about one of the…

In my everyday life, I’m pretty private and reserved, so the hardest part was taking personal emotion and putting it on the page and putting myself out there. Though he’s only in his mid- 20s, Ian Purkayastha has found enormous success as one of New York’s premier truffle brokers. Purkayastha supplies these elusive and valuable members of the fungus family to some of the finest restaurants in the city. In his memoir, Truffle Boy, he recounts his journey from a childhood filled with a love of food to struggling to make his mark in the competitive world of exotic food purveyors. The book came about in an unusual way: Purkayastha had written some stream-of-consciousness reflections about his life that he thought might be the basis of a book some day.…

Three days before our daughter was born, I celebrated 10 years of freelance writing. The work felt as natural as breathing. A child, I reasoned, was another challenge – like a dropped client or an immovable deadline – that I could work my way through. I am writing this five months later. Normalcy has only begun creeping back into my workday. Part of that is the benefit of experience. But I’ve also adapted. I had no choice. It’s either writing or falling back on my vast bookstore experience. New parents can freelance with a lot less stress if they prepare. Here are some tips for readying your career for your new arrival: 1 Work ahead. Two reasons. The first comes from Lizzie Skurnick, author of Shelf Discovery, who has written…

Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents • Originally founded in the early 20th century. • Seven agents represent a wide range of writers in areas including literary fiction and memoir; history and biography; mystery; and children’s literature. • Represent classic titles in print for decades as well as a list featuring 50 to 70 new titles each year. Serving House Books • A literary press publishing poetry, novels, story collections, essays, memoirs, and other creative works. • Authors generally come to this press after achieving such accomplishments as previous publications, grants, and awards. • A number of its books have been finalists and winners of literary rewards and have received exceptional reviews. University of Wisconsin Press • Has one of the largest trade lists of memoirs, fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry…

One of the things that makes Story Genius unique is that readers can see each of the book’s lessons unfold step-by-step in real time via author and book coach Jennie Nash’s real-life examples, which are detailed throughout the book as she applies Cron’s method to her own novelin- progress. “[Nash] developed her novel from scratch on the pages of Story Genius…Watching the process unfold is invaluable because writers can see firsthand exactly how a writer starts by digging into the story before page one of the novel, and how everything else organically builds from there,” Cron says. In other words: Story Genius doesn’t just tell, it shows. Cron also provides a template for “Scene Cards,” which aim to help the writer both flesh out what will happen plot-wise in each…

After finishing my last book – a novel I co-wrote with my husband – I planned to get right back on the saddle and begin another novel. I mean, sure, first I’d relax for a week or two, indulge our kids with movie marathons and lazymorning pancakes, attend to the household repairs, and catch up on correspondence, but then I’d commence a Big New Project. The relaxing part went off without a hitch. But that reascensionto- the-saddle part was giving me pains. My brain seemed cored of the Big and New. Weeks went by and I wasn’t writing anything besides little personal jottings in my notebook. My husband tried to comfort me: You’ve just spend four years researching and writing a novel; you’re probably still processing. And I reassured myself…

In 2015, at the Sanibel Island Writing Conference, I attended a great craft talk on short-form nonfiction given by Leslie Jamison that ended with a writing prompt, and she’s kindly agreed to let me share the prompt with you. Jamison began by introducing the class to the concept, originating in the 16th century, of the wunderkammer – the cabinet (or room) of wonders, which held collections of interesting humanmade artifacts, specimens of natural history, and treasures collected on expeditions. Wunderkammer were carefully curated and arranged to inspire awe (taxidermied alligators, drinking vessels carved from rhino horns) curiosity (narwhal tusks, intricate puzzles, or navigation tools), titillation (jade sculptures of unusual sexual positions), even fear (poison rings, shrunken heads). Jamison challenged the class participants to explore the idea of the personal wunderkammer,…

“In memoir, you have to be particularly careful not to alienate the reader by making the material seem too lived-in. It mustn't have too much of the smell of yourself, otherwise the reader will be unable to make it her own.” —Rachel Cusk Ü Benjamin Lorr’s debut book, Hell- Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga, was met with high critical acclaim. The New York Times called it “witty and wise,” and Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, said reading it was “a wonderful, inspiring, maddening, complicated, edifying journey.” Prior to his career in writing, Lorr was a high school science and sex education teacher in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He is presently working on his second book and working as a consultant for public…

Once upon a time, fiction ruled the market. Today, however, nonfiction is just as heavily competitive – and memoir is a key corner of that genre. Consider some famous best-selling memoirs from the recent past: Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, and, most recently, J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. As three-time memoirist Mary Karr recounts in The Art of Memoir: “Memoir as a genre has entered its heyday, with a massive surge in readership the past 20 years or so.” And luckily for would-be memoirists, the genre has a wide appeal among commercial publishers. Why such a recent interest in this form? Perhaps it has to do with the confessional nature of memoir, the reality-based aspect: Just consider the popularity…

As a younger writer, I spent lots of time trying to write elegant prose. I read and emulated the acrobatics of Nabokov, the romantic flights of Cheever and Woolf and Baldwin, the liposuction of Hemingway and Carver. But even as I steadily internalized the virtues of “good” writing – clarity, precision, variety, etc. – I was also discovering a batch of writers who wrote phenomenally bad prose. And here’s the thing: I loved it every bit as much. To be sure, I’m not talking about prose that is merely bad, i.e. incompetent or unrefined; I’m talking about prose that has been masterfully crafted to defy all of those received virtues and wear its ugliness on its sleeve – prose that aims not to shimmer and flow so much as creak…

Micro-memoirs… 1. …Need titles that do heavy lifting. Titles have more impact in short pieces, simply because they take up a bigger percentage of the word count. Further, we’ve all had the experience of being halfway through a novel or memoir and realizing we’ve forgotten the title; when a piece is bite-sized, the title lingers like an aftertaste during your entire reading experience. Let it contribute to your meaning-making. 2. …Can make great use of humor, because pieces tend to be trimmed of excess exposition, and so their bones are more visible. What other form features elements stripped of all but the necessary details? The joke. Like jokes, micro-memoirs succeed or fail based on timing; timing, which is created through the amount and order of information in balance with silence.…

You’ve been working on a manuscript for the next best-selling novel, and after years of hard work and revisions, you’re ready to send it out. But all of the time you’ve spent on your manuscript won’t matter much if you simply pop your masterpiece into the mail without thoroughly researching the press. Before you submit to a publisher, whether big or small, it's essential to make sure you’ve perfectly met their criteria. Information in this section is provided to The Writer by the individual markets and events; for more information, contact those entities directly. Subscribers to The Writer have online access to information on publishers, publications, conferences, contests and agents. Go to writermag.com and click on Writing Resources. F = Fiction N = Nonfiction P = Poetry C = Children’s…