Innehållsförteckning för March 2023 från The Writer

James Joyce Doormat This quote from Leopold Bloom in Ulysses seems fitting for the doorway of any house. £20 (approximately $24.19), theliterarygiftcompany.com The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays Five great Irish plays are collected in this book, with works ranging from Brendan Behan’s classic The Hostage to an early work from Martin McDonagh that hinted at his coming brilliance. $22.95, barnesandnoble.com The Picture of Dorian Gray Novel Poster The entirety of Oscar Wilde’s novel is reprinted on this poster around the classic image of Mr. Gray. £12.99 (approximately $15.71), theliterarygiftcompany.com Sally Rooney Normal People Tote Bag You could easily imagine one of the characters from this young Irish author’s novels using this bag, right? $22, etsy.com W.B. Yeats Writer’s Block These 2-inch wood cubes make a bout of writer’s…

CHELSEA BANNING’S JOURNEY through writing and self-publishing Of Crowns and Legends, her first book, is not unfamiliar: ups and downs, stops and starts, and learning the business from the ground up. It was in promoting her novel that Banning happened on a road far less traveled. The 33-year-old Ohio-based writer demonstrated how using social media can (with a stroke of luck, she says) pay off. The long march to publication “I started writing Of Crowns and Legends in high school, then put it down in college and picked it back up in 2018,” she told The Writer. “I finished the final draft in early 2022 and published it [in] late August. I did a lot of research on the self-publishing process. How to do it, where to do it, what…

I asked novelist Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor to choose five books by Anglophone African writers. From the beginning, she stumps me. “I cheated a little,” she says. “I included one from so-called Francophone Africa and another from Lusophone, but they’re translated into English.” When I ask her why, she returns readily, “I want to get away from the silos. Even within our own spaces, [I want to] elevate the story no matter where it is from, from within the continent.” She smiles. “We miss out on the immensity and diversity of stories that come from the other language areas. [There’s] incredible literature, say from the Francophone or Lusophone world, that informs and actually speaks to the so-called African Anglophone realities. There’s a space that actually is an African space that should…

Dear Gigi, Could you please explain all the various categories or genres of books? For instance, I’ve just learned that speculative fiction is science fiction focused on the future. How do you define book club fiction as compared to adult fiction, women’s fiction, contemporary, or commercial? Is the opposite of “upmarket” something lower on the scale and probably not worthwhile? Can a manuscript qualify under two or more of these categories? How does one define a book’s category in a query letter so that a potential agent will want to read it and possibly represent it? Should I keep it to one category or be more honest and use more than one? Thanks, —LOTS OF OPTIONS Dear Lots, This is a pile of good questions and a couple of really…

IT’S NOT OFTEN THAT A TWEET will have staying power after it disappears from your feed, but this 2021 viral tweet by YA author Jenny Elder Moke still resonates with me: “I know this is very against popular discussion, but the idea of pre-orders being so important to a book’s success is just exhausting. People just…don’t shop that way. Books are a tactile thing, and they’re often a browsing experience. People want to peruse at a bookstore.” As the president of Books Forward, a literary publicity firm, I find the question of “how do people buy books?” is always on my mind because the answers fuel our book marketing efforts. And here was an intriguing offshoot of that essential book-buying question: “Do pre-order campaigns ‘work?’” Pre-order campaigns are promotions designed…

Stop us if you’ve heard this one. A headstrong young woman bucks the expectations of society and her family by stubbornly insisting on doing things her own way. She meets a young man who seems immune to her many charms, spars with him, and ultimately falls in love with him. Along the way, she learns that things are not always what they seem and sometimes, being vulnerable is the only way to move forward. Of course you’ve heard this before. It’s the plot of Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice. But it’s also the plot to a whole host of other books, including Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding, The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim, Debating Darcy by Sayantani DasGupta, Pride and Papercuts by Staci Hart, and Pride, Prejudice…

I make these cookies that have become a hit with friends and family – enough so that I’ve even gotten some commissions via word of mouth for events like birthdays, graduations, weddings, and baby showers, and I’ve managed to earn a little pocket money to boot. I’m not going to lie. These cookies are pretty awesome. They are the fancy kind that you sometimes see in boutique cafes and bakeries, glazed and decorated with royal icing. With time and practice, I’ve gotten quite adept at creating any design I can find a cookie cutter for, and when I can’t find a cookie cutter, like for a recent request that someone made for guitars, I can print or freehand a paper template that does the job. My “portfolio” includes holiday motifs:…

I reach Chiedozié Dike through my friend Joj, who has worked, as long as I’ve known them, to provide a space for writers who don’t always get the attention they deserve. Within a hot minute, I know I’m in the presence of someone whose own mission is to spread the possibilities of writing out to as many people as possible. Dike, who is from Nigeria and now lives in London, is a writer and lawyer. He has also written for television and radio. His short stories have been published in three anthologies and in online publications, including The Write Launch and Afreada. He is working on several novels. The Writer: You’re a copywriter and a lawyer. How does all of that fold into the writing you’re doing now, which is…

Confession: I am a process junkie. As much as I enjoy talking and thinking about story and craft, my true love is analyzing process. Process involves the physical act of writing and how and when you do it – your habits and routines. But it is also, perhaps mainly, about mindset…or mind games. It is the ways you psych yourself up and psych yourself out – steel yourself, reward yourself, pep talk your way through it, or get yourself stuck. Process is a combination of mindset and approach: the ways you create the conditions you need in order to create. Figuring out your own best process is about noticing what you need, when you need it, and why it is what you need. It’s about pulling back the curtain and…

When it comes to getting published, there are many spinning cogs. Here are some of the resources you’ll need to take your work from inside your brain to in front of the eyes of readers. The following listings are a sampling of what the industry has to offer. For a complete guide, visit writermag.com. THE MONTH AHEAD March 1 Ralph Ellison was born on this day in 1904. He would become the first African American to win the National Book Award for Fiction with his novel Invisible Man. March 2 Today, the birthday of Dr. Seuss, is National Read Across America Day. The goal is to encourage kids to build a daily reading habit. March 3 The annual California Creative Writers Conference (wcwriters.com) starts in Los Angeles, with dozens of…