Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, September 7, 2012 Edition

Interesting links from around the web of interest to writers. Some have been around in my "to be posted" file for a little while now, others are from this week's crop. Enjoy.

> A promising addition to the nonfiction writer's craft shelf is the recently-released Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction edited by Dinty W. Moore, with advice from an ace group of 26 CNF experts. You can skim the table of contents. 

> A literary journal editor on how and why she "tears apart" a manuscript. 

> I wasn't aware that the British-based journal Granta is already published in six other languages, and will add a seventh, Chinese, soon. This article has a bunch of other interesting facts about the publication, too.

> Speaking of Granta, it's one of 12 picks on Flavorwire's list of the most beautiful literary magazines online. 

> I love the no-B.S. approach, and so I like me an agent's blog that tells it straight, even if that agent self-identifies as a shark. 

> Michael Steinberg discusses the Role of Research in Personal Narratives, including this aha moment: "...the narrator’s personal (coming-of-age) story couldn’t stand alone without the book degenerating into a self-centered, here’s-what-happened narrative. The memoir, I realized, needed a larger context. It was necessary then, to weave the personal story and the research together so that, just as it is in real life, the one is inextricably linked with the other. As it turns out, the research not only was necessary, but it also opened up previously unplanned opportunities for deepening and extending the narrative."

> Gretchen Rubin, whose new book, Happy at Home is just out, reminded me with this quote, that one of the reasons I enjoy the writing world so much is that I am disproportionately in love with things like spelling, paper, type fonts, and proofreading, among other things. “The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.” -Logan Pearsall Smith

> Finally, I hope you will read all of Verlyn Klinkenborg's excellent essay Where Do Sentences Come From?, at the New York Times' Opinionator blog, but especially this, about the reason to write and then release sentences you construct in your head: "The more you do this, the easier it will be to remember the sentences you want to keep. Better yet, you’ll know that you can replace any sentence you lose with one that’s just as good. There’s a good reason for doing this all in your head. You’re learning to be comfortable in that dark, cavernous place. It’s not so frightening. There’s language there, and you’re learning to play with it on your own without the need to snatch at words and phrases for an assignment. And here’s another good reason. A sentence you don’t write down is a sentence you feel free to change. Inscribe it, and you’re chained to it for life. That, at least, is how many writers act. A written sentence possesses a crippling inertia."

Have a great weekend.