Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, November 16, 2012 Edition

> The National Book Awards have been decided. All the winners and nominees, with links to excerpts from each, are at GalleyCat.

> The upside of being stuck in traffic: catching an NPR interview with Barbara Kingsolver talking about her newest novel, Flight Behavior - which by the way, has the glorious opening line: "A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away and it is one part rapture."

> Now that the Silver Linings Playbook is in movie theaters, I'm reminded that Matthew Quick, author of the original novel, wrote a guest post for this blog back in 2008, about meeting readers during the early leg of his debut book tour.

> In a Bookslut interview, Dinty W. Moore, author of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction: Advice and Essential Exercises from Respected Writers, Editors, and Teacher, has this to say: "...I'm almost always scrapping my beginning and ending somewhere in revision, because it is somewhere in revision that I begin to realize what it is I am trying to say in an essay, and thus for me to nail it, to get it as nearly-perfect as can be, I have to start somewhere new, and often end somewhere other than where I thought I was going."

> I was introduced to the Reddit feature AMA (Ask Me Anything) months ago by my teenage son. The idea is, an expert of some sort, or at least someone others want to ask questions of, agrees to answer any inquiries readers toss at them for a specified period. Last week, there was an AMA with Jane Friedman, former publisher of Writers Digest and current web editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review.

> If you are one of my New Jersey contacts, you know I can't stop talking about my upcoming teaching assignments at The Writers Circle. Yesterday I wrote about TWC's director, novelist Judith Lindbergh, and her turn as expert commentator on the History Channel documentary series Mankind. Such fun to know such interesting people.

Have a great weekend!