Friday Fridge Clean-Out: May 7th Edition

► A new place to find long form journalism on the web.

►I get caught up reading memoirs, fiction and essay collections, and I forget sometimes how much I love a great reported nonfiction book. Then I read something as stunning as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, and I remember. Highly recommended.

► More crappy freelancer contract news, and one writer who had enough.

► Here’s one way to make your book a best seller. Just buy a lot. A whole lot. And send them to unsuspecting strangers. Huh, why didn’t we all think of that a lot sooner?

►Mired in the submissions/rejections / why-bother bog? Judith Kitchen’s essay/list/tips over at Brevity will surely help. For example:

4. It’s normal to be a bit disappointed, especially if you are confident that what you sent is absolutely the best you can do and does have merit; but if you find yourself obsessed with the process, then pull back and wait, because creating the work is so much more fun than publishing it;
5. You can’t know how true #4 is until you are published and you discover that it does not change your life"
And in another section, this:
"I submitted work 17 times to The Georgia Review before any was accepted. This makes me think that often we stop too soon, just when an editor is finally getting used to the voice or the style, just before an editor is sure that you have staying power"

►Finally, ever open the instructions for some electronic item, encounter something like, “under slide big bolt red turn turn”? Perhaps it’s Chinglish. Don’t have time to read about it? The quickie slide show.

► And one more. As I’ve mentioned before, writers are not always so nice to one another. And some of the greatest writers of all time publicly dissed their fellow writers. Read it and cringe.

Have a great weekend.