Friday Friday Clean Out: January 29 Edition

► Jordan Rosenfield interviews Hope Edelman about her editing process.

►Lorraine Duffy Merkl on being published, 50, and grateful. And always, busy promoting the book.

►Los Angeles's KCRW radio's Bookworm programs are archived here. Recent podcast additions are interviews with Barbara Kingsolver, A.S. Byatt, and Nicholson Baker.

► I got my first subscription to a writer's magazine at age 12, and it was Writer's Digest, which is marking its 90th year on the newsstand – not only a major achievement for any business, but a minor miracle in the current print magazine industry.

► R.I.P. Erich Segal, Robert Parker, and J.D. Salinger.

► Bad enough writers contend with some people's expectations that they don't actually need to be paid for their work. These writers, screwed by the Hollywood age police, took it to court, and won.

►Get right with rejections. James Chartrand explains in a recent post, "One excellent professional writer said that she made a goal to get at least ten rejection letters every month. That’s right. Her goal was to get rejection letters, not acceptance letters. Why? Because when she made that goal about rejections, they weren’t nearly as disappointing to receive. They were simply a mark of honor for having submitted at all."

► Speaking of rejections, many-times-published children's sports fiction writer Dan Gutman shares his road to rejection and eventual publication, with excerpts from the actual agent rejection letters.

►Hmm. Banning the dictionary from an elementary school because somewhere in its hundreds of pages lurks an accurate definition of a sexual act. Just another example of absurd modern kid-coddling. Lots more, plus common sense, over at Lenore Skenazy's intelligent blog, Free-Range Kids.

►And finally, the definitive guide to never again fearing the semi-colon.

Have a great weekend.