Innehållsförteckning för May 2022 från The Writer

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I VOWED TO reform my reading tracking, which, as longtime readers may remember, previously only existed in a high-tech system called “A Really Long List in an Untitled Draft Email.” No, no, this would not do, I decided. Ten years of helter-skelter lists were enough. It was time to get serious. It was time for a Google Spreadsheet. Oh, what a beautiful color-coded world my read books now live in. There are pie charts for genre, book count by month, and author demographics, to help ensure my reading list looks more like the U.S. census (incredibly diverse!) than the publishing industry (largely white, non-disabled, and straight!). Each time I closed a book for the last time, I flew to the spreadsheet, eager to get that delicious dopamine…

I am obsessed with the idea of homeland. As an immigrant, I write about my own homeland of Taiwan frequently, with a kind of wistful nostalgia that borders on dreaminess. This doesn’t make me unique or even remotely interesting since most of us come from a place, whether domestic or international, and think of it in warm fuzzy overtones. But after talking to Dr. Jumana Bayeh, a senior lecturer at Australia’s Macquarie University in modern history, politics, and international relations and author of The Literature of the Lebanese Diaspora (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), I have even more to process. “The crux of diaspora literature,” Bayeh tells me, “is [that it] always contains a character [who is] not quite at home even though they are at home. They’re feeling like they’re out…

First, before diving into tips and advice on helping your work stand out, I want to address the term “slush pile.” Because a lot of writers aren’t big fans of it. They say it makes them feel like editors don’t take their work seriously, so I’ll use the word “queue” for the majority of this piece. However, let me explain why we use the term “slush pile” because it’s one of the biggest lessons submitting writers need to learn. First and foremost, your story is unique. You worked hard to get it to the point where you felt confident enough to submit it. But that’s the case for every other story in the queue, like individual, beautiful snowflakes in a white slush of narrative. Unlike writing, submitting isn’t an isolated…

SPRING IS A SEASON OF GROWTH, change, and possibility. What better time to refresh your creative process? Use these tips to declutter your brain, reorganize your approach, and clear space for writing in the months ahead. Clean out your writerly closet With winter gone and summer racing toward us, it’s time to open every drawer, empty the closets, and sort through your goals, perceptions, and process. Take stock of where you are in your creative life at this moment. What’s working well? What’s cluttering your mental space? What tricks, crutches, and excuses do you reach for most often? What parts of your brain do you barely use, and what would help you access them more often? Make a list of ideas or routines you’ve been holding onto that no longer…

The Writer: Tell me a little bit about the merging of forms and inspiration in your life: You draw from everything, poetry to dance to song to humanitarian work. Ari Honarvar: I’m kind of a little bit anti-compartmentalization. Merging things – that’s life, you know, [just like] our bodies: Our blood is going everywhere. Muscles are everywhere. It’s not like they’re compartmentalized to one spot. And why should we be we? We are so much better when we are connecting with ourselves, our inner self, our community, friends, and nature. And then just allowing that to inform our actions. TW: What does that do for your art, do you think? AH: It helps me pivot with what I cannot control; move with and bring all of myself. Then the ideas…

1 Blind submissions are called such for a reason. If the contest you enter is one of them, make sure your name and other vital details don’t appear anywhere in the submission file. This includes: cover page, title line, and header/footer. Online submission managers have their own ways of identifying you – trust that they will work. 2 Be sure your submission is within the specified word count. Judges may be willing to let 10 or 20 extra words slide, but if you’re more than that, definitely make cuts. 3 Stick with the theme of the contest you are entering, if there is one. If you are on the fence over whether your story can be interpreted in just the right way to fit the theme, rethink the submission. Others…

THE MFA DEGREE, OR MASTER OF Fine Arts degree, in creative writing can be a hot commodity. Those three letters after an author’s name can open doors to publishing and teaching opportunities. But what if a writer lacks the time and the thousands of tuition dollars to enroll in such a program or simply prefers to design a self-paced course of study without the pressure of working toward an official academic degree? Enter DIY MFA. In 2010, New York author Gabriela Pereira founded what she describes as less of a program and more of a virtual experience to assist writers in achieving their literary goals. Many participants show up mid-career, she says; others are retired and eager to write the novel they’ve been dreaming about for years. “We’ve designed everything…

AS A WRITER, I FIND THAT FOCUSing on publishing, rather than on the writing process, is a big mistake. I know, that’s easy for me to say now that I’ve published a couple of books and my work has appeared in some cool places, but I swear to you, I have felt this way for a long time. The irony is that, if you focus more on the writing, you’re more likely to get published anyway. I well remember years ago when I got the news that the Science section of the New York Times was going to publish an essay of mine. I had my annual physical that day, and for the first time in my life, my blood pressure was high. That’s how excited I was. There were…

THE MONTH AHEAD May 1 May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Find a list of AAPI-owned bookstores to support this month at bookriot.com/aapi-owned-bookstores. In our March issue, Vanessa Hua also recommended five books by East Asian writers in “The Nightstand;” find her picks at writermag.com/writing-inspiration under “Products for Writers.” May 12 It’s National Limerick Day – why not write one to celebrate? May 14 The winners of the 2021 Bram Stoker Awards will be announced at StokerCon in Denver. May 21-22 May is also National Short Story Month. Salute short fiction in all its glory with fellow fans at Short Story Fest, a two-day event that will be held entirely online in 2022. Learn more at shortstoryfest.com.…

Dear Gigi, Would Mark Twain or Ring Lardner be published today? I read a lot of short fiction, but never find anything folksy. —TIME WARP Dear Warp, No idea what you mean by “folksy.” Do you mean “about 1930s America?” If so, then yes. Do you mean “using particular speech patterns that we might hear in 1950s America?” Absolutely. Or do you mean “pertaining to things that mattered to 1950s Americans”? There, too, the answer is yes. I’ll give you another bonus things to think about: Both Twain and Lardner started out as newspaper stringers. I know some newspaper writers today who also dabble in short stories, but they invest in it. They study the market; they pay attention to what editors like which kinds of stories…if our Twain and…